Daily Devotion - March 25, 2024

We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (2 Cor. 2:12)

Sometimes earthly things we consider solid and secure are anything but. C. S. Lewis expressed this idea in his book, The Great Divorce, where he writes of a fantasy bus ride that takes British tourists to heaven. When these passengers step off the bus, they discover they’re hollow and transparent, but everyone living in heaven is solid and whole.

Lewis’s fantasy is meant to picture this life as a mist — a shadow of what is to come. In contrast – and counter to our ordinary thoughts – heaven is the more significant reality, the place where everything becomes solid, safe, and secure. 

So counterintuitive are so many aspects of the gospel – being saved by God’s grace rather than our goodness, being secure in heaven even when the earth is shaking, being loved even when we were God’s enemies – that we require the work of the Holy Spirit to understand God’s grace. 

When by grace we are brought into God’s holy presence, then this reality will become perfectly clear. But while we remain on earth, we get brief glimpses of what heaven will be that comes with this assurance from the Holy Spirit: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9)

Prayer: Lord, may your Holy Spirit make heaven’s blessings so real to my heart that I am made able to face the harsh realities of earth with the assurances of your grace.