The poet W. H. Auden put it this way in “For the Time Being,” a Christmas Oratorio: “And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.”
Isn’t it our experience that we hope to leave behind our anxieties, our depression, our fears, our sadness, and our grief, hoping to leave all that and more behind, and to fall into the peace of Christ? But, look how many will not do just this. They will not follow; they will not believe. They still want to search. They want further proof, as if there could ever be enough. One more question. Once more about all those lost books of the Bible the church has been pretending don’t exist and are not trustworthy. And on, and on.
We think we can make our own substitute heaven, and not choose the one Jesus offers. An example: a retirement center in Florida called The Villages, the world’s largest, gated retirement community. It is about 40 miles from Orlando, land of Mickey Mouse and company, and sits on 20,000 acres, as much as Disney World. There are at least 100,000 residents living on 100 miles of golf cart paths, and there is a book detailing just how many of these 100,000 are scrambling to live out their unfulfilled dreams from earlier in life. From the stories it seems The Villages is something of a geriatric spring break, in a world without children. One female resident told the author of the book that “You can be anyone you want to be here,” a form of senior make believe in a city of streets lined with nothing but golf carts, and again, no children allowed. Is this retirement? Is there a place for such useless lives, for no longer following Jesus? What a lousy version of heaven! Substitute heaven or substitute hell, you decide? Trusting ourselves instead of God, always leads to a substitute hell.
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