MANSIONS

Summertime is always a busy season. I am either working at the drawing table, traveling or trying to catch up on work around the house and on our property. I have been finding that a lot of my inspiration oddly enough has been found when I am lugging an overfilled cart with tree cuttings to be stacked down by the barn.

I had been listening to a podcast during one of these work days which spoke about John chapter 14. Specifically, about the new King James translation and the preparation Christ speaks of for us in the world to come.

“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. - John 14:1-3

In this passage Jesus is speaking to His disciples and reassuring them that although He is going away for a time, He will be about preparing a place for them in His kingdom. The King James speaks of many mansions. As a young and impressionable believer some many years back, I remember vividly chatting with friends and talking excitedly of this idea. I believed that one day He would bless us with beautiful and spacious homes full of marvelous furniture and things of splendor that we could call our own. It would be our very own partitioned dwelling place made just for us. I was applying my own limited thinking to the concept. Likely a translational issue, the Greek word the KJV attempts to render is “ Monai” which means an abode, a dwelling place, or many rooms within a home.

This thought is at the very heart of the Father. I am coming again for you that you may abide with me in My home as My family. As my sons and daughters who I take great joy in and who I desperately long to be with. The heart of the father is communal and all inclusive. He is furiously zealous and takes deep joy in the fellowship of His children. There will be no more separation and we will have a rightful place of belonging among His people.

Our place in this new country will not be like what we know now on this earth. Here we are divided and separate from one another. We put up walls and fences and we place no trespass signs on our grounds and mark out our little slice of land and let our neighbor know that this is yours and this is mine. We lead separate lives while singing of the joys of a heaven come down to earth which by its very nature is intimately intermingled and joined in sister and brotherhood. But oftentimes sadly we remain disconnected and we are quick to judge and to demean those that don’t feed into our preconceptions of what we believe is righteousness.

But there is always hope. In this place, on this day we will truly be one. Our Father’s great home will not be a place filled with others of the same mindset who clutch to the same theological and denominational points and customs or hold to the same belief in government that we do. That all won’t matter when that day comes. It will be a warm and well-loved place filled with others wonderfully different from you and I. Believers who on the earth for a time were foreigners in our land and still others from far off places, tongues and nationalities. It will be a true haven, a great city filled with children of one heart. They will be as diverse and boundless as the flowers of the field but they will all be unified in one person. In the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We will not only find satisfying and deep, intimate fellowship with Him there, but with those others in that evergreen place. This world in all its brokenness and divisiveness is the proving ground for life in the next one. How we grow, learn and develop here is what we will build off and take into the next world. Under the banner of Jesus Christ, we are to be one in this life because we will be one in the next. And how we treat others or even think of them matters. For in that coming day, our weak works will be burned up like chaff in the oven and our careless words will be measured on the scales of His righteousness. So be merciful, Love your neighbor next door and your neighbor across the whole of the world. Love unconditionally as He has loved you, without reservation or thought of gain. Love your enemies and those who you don’t agree with. Love and work to understand others and do not poison your heart with knived words or thoughts of superiority.

But rather think on the joy of fellowship in that great home He is crafting for each one of us and express that love and unity to those in the here and now. In a broken world that thirsts for compassion and true hope you can reflect the coming joys of the soon to be. Because, in my Father’s house there are many mansions and more than enough room for you and I.