The Overlap
“But the whole point of the Christian story, at the climax of the Jewish story, is that the curtain has been pulled back, the door has been opened from the other side, and like Jacob we have glimpsed a ladder between heaven and earth with messengers going to and fro upon it. ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ says Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, not offering a new way of getting to heaven hereafter, but announcing that the rule of heaven, the very life of heaven, is now overlapping with earth in a new way—a way which sweeps together all the moments from Jacob’s ladder to Isaiah’s vision, all the patriarchal insights and prophetic dreams, and turns them into a human form, a human voice, a human life, a human death.
...Heaven and earth have overlapped permanently where he stands, where he hung, where he rises, wherever the fresh wind of his Spirit now blows. Living as a Christian means living in the world as it’s been reshaped by and around Jesus and his Spirit...
Christian prayer is about standing at the fault line, being shaped by the Jesus who knelt in Gethsemane, groaning in travail, holding heaven and earth together like someone trying to tie two pieces of rope with people tugging at the other ends to pull them apart.
...Like John in Revelation 4 and 5, we see through prayer a door standing open in heaven, and we are ushered into the throne room.
But we are no longer there as mere observers. We are there as beloved children. Let Jesus himself have the last word: ‘If you, then, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!’ (Matthew 7:11).”
~N. T. Wright
...Heaven and earth have overlapped permanently where he stands, where he hung, where he rises, wherever the fresh wind of his Spirit now blows. Living as a Christian means living in the world as it’s been reshaped by and around Jesus and his Spirit...
Christian prayer is about standing at the fault line, being shaped by the Jesus who knelt in Gethsemane, groaning in travail, holding heaven and earth together like someone trying to tie two pieces of rope with people tugging at the other ends to pull them apart.
...Like John in Revelation 4 and 5, we see through prayer a door standing open in heaven, and we are ushered into the throne room.
But we are no longer there as mere observers. We are there as beloved children. Let Jesus himself have the last word: ‘If you, then, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!’ (Matthew 7:11).”
~N. T. Wright
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