pioneer

I enjoyed reading the biography of Daniel Boone over the past year.  He truly was a frontiersman and a pioneer.  He loved living just past the edge of civilization and he paved the way for others to follow.  Over the past few days I've been thinking about how Jesus is our "Daniel Boone" to Heaven.  We've not been there yet and it's a bit scary to consider what lies beyond the edge of this familiar place we've lived our entire lives.  Jesus came to identify with us, to redeem us and to show us the path that lies ahead.  Through His life, death, resurrection and ascension He has blazed a trail for us.  We experience first the physical life in our body.  We then die, as Jesus died.  He told the thief on the cross next to Him that both of them would be in Paradise right after their bodies died.  When we die, our bodies are left behind like the shell of a 17 year locust that has been shed for a new form.  Our spirit goes directly to Heaven.  After Jesus was in Heaven for three days, as a Spirit, He returned to inhabit His resurrected body.  After we have been in Heaven as a Spirit for a time, Jesus will raise the bodies of all believers when the dead in Christ rise to meet Him in the air and the spirits will be ,restored to resurrected bodies like His.  Jesus had a resurrection body that could be touched, was composed of flesh and bone, could eat fish and yet had a capacity of moving through walls...truly a body but truly different than the former body.  We too will have a body like this.  This special physical body of Jesus was taken up into Heaven.  I was struck to consider how this body was tangible and made of flesh and bone and yet was able to travel to Heaven.  And so we also will have new, physical bodies, that will also travel to Heaven.  The future is full of experiences we have not had, as believers.  The frontiers of death, existence in Heaven and our resurrection bodies are unknowns to us.  Yet, we have absolute assurance that the pioneer of our path to Heaven will also guide us through each twist and turn of this exciting future.

 

Hebrews 2:¹⁰ For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. ¹¹ For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,

 

1 Corinthians 15:⁴² So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. ⁴³ It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.

 

blessings to fellow travelers in faith,

Rob Smith