Step Right Up

Hebrews 12:18-24

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• No, you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem
• Countless angels in festal gathering
• The assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven
• The spirits of the just made perfect

Applying the Word to My Life:
Every year I take each of my boys to the fair just one on one. We set aside one day for just the two of us, and he gets to decide what we do, what we eat, and when we are ready to call it a day. For that day, there really is nothing else on the schedule that matters.

You would think the fair would be a terrible place for a real conversation. It is loud and crowded, with rides, food stands, people everywhere, and something new competing for your attention every few feet. Somehow, though, we end up talking more there than we do almost anywhere else.

I think it is because the fair replaces the distractions that usually pull us away from each other with distractions that do not really matter. I am not answering work emails while he is getting ready for practice. Nobody is trying to finish homework or get out the door. We are not passing each other in the kitchen with one eye on whatever comes next. The fair may be noisy, but for that day most of the things that normally divide our attention are gone, and because of that I get more of my son and he gets more of me.

Hebrews gives us a much bigger version of that same idea. It begins with Sinai, surrounded by fire and darkness, the blast of a trumpet and a voice so terrifying that the people begged God to stop speaking. Then the picture changes completely: "No, you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem...and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven...and the spirits of the just made perfect."

That phrase - made perfect - matters. It does not mean they have been erased or turned into something less human. It means they have been completed, freed from everything that kept them from becoming fully what God intended them to be.

That changes the way I think about the people we love who have died in Christ. While they were here, even their love for us had limits. They got tired and distracted. They misunderstood things. Sin clouded their judgment and sometimes got between them and the people they loved. Their bodies could only be in one place at a time. Even on their best days, there were limits on how completely they could give themselves to us.

Those limits are gone now. What remains is not less of the person we loved, but more of them.

Death doesn't make the people we love in Christ less present. It strips away everything that ever kept them from being fully present in the first place.

Hebrews pushes the idea even further because it does not say that someday we will approach Mount Zion. It says, "you have approached." The communion of saints is not simply a promise about where we will go after we die. In Christ, we already belong to a family that stretches beyond the part of creation we can currently see.

That is worth remembering when we look at the lives of saints. They are not simply historical figures whose lives we study from a safe distance. They are alive in Christ, more completely themselves than they ever managed to be here, with the weakness, distraction, and limitations of this world stripped away.

At the fair, removing a handful of ordinary distractions lets me get more of my son for a day.

Heaven removes them all.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll picture one person I love who has died in Christ - not as someone who disappeared, but as someone now free to love without all the limits that once got in the way.