Coracle Trust E-Reflections
What is our ending?
Tuesday 16 February 2010
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him. (1 John 3:2)
Stained glass
Our ending is full union. It starts and ends with a very bearable likeness of being! Not so much with the setting of an exam, with pass (heaven) and fail (hell) set before us, but with an invitation. An invitation to so order, be so internally and externally arranged and aligned with the person of Jesus that righteousness, peace and joy are embedded in us - that we enjoy the life of God.
Richard Rohr calls this ‘mutual indwelling’ and Henri Nouwen translates Jesus’s words in John 14:23 as ‘make your home in me as I make my home in you.’
We start at home and we end at home. In between we stumble, we run, we get distracted and get re-directed and ultimately are fully re-united.
PS. A visual depiction of this popped out of the TV screen last week in the middle of a popcorn and movie night with the kids. Take a squint at The Doctor Dances, a Dr Who series 1 episode which climaxes with the recognition of a set of original, parent genes – ‘a higher and prior intelligence’ is detected and rediscovered leading to union and healing.