Hebrews 12:1 - "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."
Hunh! "So great a cloud." In today's tech world, the great cloud is where all your data gets stored safely.
But for those who hunger for peace and heaven and enduring life, the greatest cloud always was, is, and will be where people are witnessing to the greatness of God, which is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ.
Each day, it is so easy for us to get caught up in the stuff that needs to get done. And don't get me wrong, it is important for us to tend to our daily responsibilities, just like the man and woman had to tend to the garden way back before sin entered the world in order that the garden would bear fruit. However, if you remember, it was when the desire to be surrounded by a cloud of stuff became greater than the desire to be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses that things went wrong for the first man and woman.
Yesterday, at my father's viewing and funeral, there were two emphatically consistent themes that came out:
1) My father worked extremely hard, faithfully tending to his daily responsibilities, but as he did, he always took time for the people that surrounded him, which were not just clients but also my mom and us four kids as, when we were little, for example, dad would pick up and personally sign "Little Golden Books" for us when he was away, and
2) A lot of people worked extremely hard to both do their responsibilities and also to say to my mom and family, "We remember you and pray for you," using both the cloud of technology like Facebook, texts, and email and also more old-fashioned means like sending flowers or calling or driving 12-hours round-trip to be with us.
It was a foretaste of heaven.
Life now must go on. And there are responsibilities to tend to. But life is so much better when we notice, acknowledge, and remember the God and the people who surround us like a cloud as we do them.
Thank you all! We praise God for you!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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