an enduring city

Cornhill Finished.
the two years are over.
i have spent two days a week with the same 30-40 people for two years, wrestling together through God's word, how to know it, how to teach it. We have sat in one building in central London, but we've been to Mount Sinai together and all around Jerusalem with Jesus and we have also glimpsed the New Creation together, all in His word.

when it came for goodbyes, Cornhill has sensibly blocked out half of the last day to share our plans for the future and to pray for each other. and as we talked and prayed and thought about leaving, it was in a sense like heaven was breaking. we were the gathered people of God from Africa and Australia and England and Ireland and China and Russia and for two years we had gathered to hear God speak in His word and now we were leaving.

and it made life seem transient in a great way. and it made the gospel seem true and real and worth it. and it brought to mind that verse in Hebrews 13 "here we do not have an enduring city". we are meant to feel displaced, we are meant to live as exiles, we are meant to expect the delay of the coming of God's Kingdom, because there is work to be done here, lost souls to save. but one day we will have a city of our own and God will be there. one day we will be together again, and part of a multitude that cannot be counted and we will stay there in perfect joy forever.

dreams

psalm 73:20 says of the wicked
"As a dream when one awakes,
so when you arise, O Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies"

and in the tone and content of the psalm it struck me that they will be like dreams. not just the wicked, but the whole way of life, the whole 'injustice'. the pressure to conform is so strong right now and it all seems to serious and urgent and real. like a nightmare where you are terrified and you can't see how anything else matters.
but as a dream when one awakes, all those pressures and 'realities' melt away in an instant and the true substance of life and the way things are is restored. how quickly do we forget our dreams when we wake, how instantly does their authority disappear? and when Jesus returns with shouts of acclamation the pressures and lures of sin will be like passing dreams. we will wake up in the real world.