Wedding season is right around the corner. Those few months of the year where every weekend you put on the suite you haven’t worn since last year and witness the coming together of two very different people. That’s why weddings are fun – you look at him, you look at her and think to yourself, “Him? Her? I never saw it coming, but it somehow works.” Together, they are beautiful.

Scripture teaches there is a wedding coming (Revelation 19). The wedding is between the very different realms of heaven and earth, but when they come together it is beautiful.

I was always taught that heaven was “up there.” That if you could somehow go high enough into the sky that you would eventually come to a place where pearly gates and streets of gold are sitting on a cloud foundation and people have halos, wings, and a harp. While this is inspiring, it isn’t what the Bible says.

Heaven is God’s realm. It is the place where his will is accomplished perfectly every time. It is where his ways rule and reign. The New Testament often calls “heaven” the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven.” Jesus taught us to pray, “May Your kingdom come, Your will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus taught us to pray that heaven would intersect with earth in order to display God’s goodness and his intention for the world. There are moments when heaven does intersect earth. It happens every day, all over the globe. Heaven and earth are interlocked at this moment, but they aren’t yet fully united. To keep the wedding metaphor going (and this may be a bit crude), heaven and earth are dating…..with the intention of getting married. And the person in charge of the courting is Jesus.

The ultimate intersection of heaven and earth is Jesus himself. The ultimate display of heaven on earth is the resurrection. In the resurrection, death was defeated and God’ new creation begun.

As we seek to understand the implications of the resurrection on our daily lives, we must realize that the resurrection teaches us to anticipate the day when heaven and earth will at last be fully united. To anticipate this day, we live right now in ways that demonstrate heaven on earth.

We forgive.

We love.

We answer injustice.

We create.

We play.

We delight in God’s good creation.

We worship.

We live in these ways in order to anticipate the day when heaven and earth are one as described in Revelation 21-22. Dress for the wedding. Discover some new ways that you can live in anticipation of God’s new world and the wedding of heaven and earth!