Thursday Thinking - The Launching of New Creation

Here are some thoughts for this 5th week of Easter. N. T. Wright explains how the resurrection of Jesus is not simply a belief in an ancient miracle or belief in some distant possibility, but the launching of a new creation that has begun and is central to our Christian life today.

From N. T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope:

The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage, postmortem journey represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God's ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed, if we leave it out altogether, as some have done quite explicitly, we don't just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the central engine, which drives it and gives every other component its reason for working.

When we talk with biblical precision about the resurrection, we discover an excellent foundation for lively and creative Christian work in the present world—not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety.

A longer excerpt from this book, "Heaven Is Not Our Home," appeared in the April 2008 issue of Christianity Today. CLICK HERE TO READ IT.