Salvation

"Salvation is not "going to heaven when we die", but 'BEING RAISED TO NEW LIFE IN GOD'S NEW HEAVEN AND NEW EARTH'

This is found in Bishop Tom Wright's book SURPRISED BY HOPE - p210 in the chapter entitled Rethinking Salvation: Heaven and Earth and the Kingdom of God.

The implications of this are more than profound, giving a total new perspective on NOW and the FUTURE. Christians are to be living signs of the new in the here and now. Jacques Ellul declares this in his seminal book "The Presence of the Kingdom"

I have included this post in the JOURNEYS LESS TRAVELLED, section because most Western Christians believe and operate on the going to heaven when we die agenda.

Incarnation

"When You walked here,
took skin, muscle, hair,
eyes, larynx, we
withheld all honour: 'His house is clay,
how can he tell us of His far country?"

- Margaret Avison

I read these poems in 1967 - 68 they continue to resonate today.

Before Abraham was - I AM

"Forsaking all" - Your Voice
never falters, and yet,
unsealing day out of a
darkness none ever knew
in full but You,
you spoke that word, closing it forever:
"Why hast Thou forsaken ...?
This measure of your being all out, and
meaning it, made you
put it all on the line
we, humanly, wanted to draw - at
having you teacher only, or
popular spokesman only, or
doctor or simply a source of sanity
for us, distracted, or only
the one who would wholeheartedly
rejoice with us, and know
our tears, our flickering time, and
stand with us.

But to make it head over heals
yielding, all the way,
you had to die for us.
The line we drew, you crossed,
and cross out, wholly forget,
at the faintest stirring of what
you know is love, is one
whose name has been, and is
and will be, the
I AM.

- Margaret Avison