June 29, 2021

Tuesday

The Heart of the Andes

 Philippians 3:17-21

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Philippians 3:20

In the mid-1850s, the Christian painter Frederic Church traveled to remote areas of South America where few North Americans ventured before that time. He took sketches all along the way, and when he returned home he painted a masterpiece—The Heart of the Andes. Church’s painting included a simple wooden cross in the foreground. The response to this massive landscape was immediate.

Mr. Church erected his painting in a giant canvas tent in New York City and charged 25 cents to see it. By looking at that painting, viewers felt they were getting a glimpse of a faraway land that excited their imaginations. Today it hangs in New York’s famed Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When we study the subject of heaven in the Bible, we’re looking at the pictures God has painted for us of the land to which we’re going. The more we study that land, the more we’ll begin behaving now like its citizens. Those who focus their gaze on heaven become more zealous, more loving, more industrious, and more evangelistic. The air of that place begins to get into our spiritual lungs, and we become tough-minded optimists.

Let’s live like citizens of heaven!

A point to ponder…

We are pilgrims passing through, on our way to another country, another land, another city. And we behave ourselves on earth as citizens of that future, glorious, eternal city.
Ron Rhodes

Read the Bible through in a year

Psalms 80-85

I love you!!!

© 2000-2021 B. Michael Goerlich