Sky and earth ! (2)

Wednesday July 21, 2021

Sky and earth ! (2)

“Your God, walk in the midst of your camp to protect yourself and deliver you from your enemies. Your camp must therefore be holy, so that the Lord will not see anything unclean in you and turn away from you.” Deuteronomy 23:15

The scriptures teach us that God's desire was to bring together and unify these two areas. Sin alone hinders this rapprochement. Nonetheless, many images in the Bible remind us that God is working to reconcile the two. Remember Jacob fleeing the vengeful anger of his brother who falls asleep in a deserted place and dreams of a ladder connecting earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending (Genesis 28.10-19). Or Moses climbing Mount Sinai, accompanied by his brother and his two sons, as well as 70 of the elders of the people, to meet God there, and even to eat and drink in His company (Exodus 24: 9-11). These furtive moments, these places inaccessible to ordinary human beings where the divine kingdom comes to meet the kingdom of men, prefigure the day when this distinction will disappear forever. The arrival of Jesus on our earth marks the beginning of this process of rapprochement. He said to Nathanael : “Truly, truly, I say to you, henceforth you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending above the Son of man” (John 1.51). Notice also that He asserts that the kingdom of heaven is now very near (Matthew 3.2; 4.17). The geography of the Kingdom of Heaven is already visible, though fleeting, among us as we gather around our Lord (Matthew 18:20). Ephemeral, since we are waiting to really see this reconciliation in Christ between all that is on earth and all that is in heaven (Colossians 1:19). In the days of the Hebrew people, God “came and went in the camp” to protect His own. Some day in the future, when we enter this promised eternity, the presence of God will be established on a recreated earth, and the border between the divine kingdom and the realm of men will have blurred. On that day, our “eyes will see Him” (Job 19. 27), come and go among us, creation finally unified !

Source (His Word for Today)