I find it incomprehensible that $2.99 hand soap can kill a virus, but that virus can kill me. It’s like a real-life game of rock, paper, scissors in which the virus is the scissors, we are the paper, and soap is the rock.
And yet here we are, reminded of our mortality again. Somehow we get surprised by these reminders, which may be why 28,000 people follow the Twitter account @death_reminder, which tweets only one message a day: “You will die someday.”
We live in wobbly tents, and we can’t wait to go home.
These Tents
Scripture doesn’t mince words about our current bodies. Paul, the tentmaker, compares our bodies to a tent: “For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling…” (2 Corinthians 5:2).
Anyone who’s lived in a tent can relate. No matter how much you try, you’re never really comfortable in a tent. Tents are weak and can’t stand up to much, and they’re never really home. When we live in tents, we may enjoy it for a while, but we’ll eventually long for more.
Remember that camping trip that started out okay, but then it rained for four days straight and it started to leak, and you couldn’t wait to get home? That’s a picture of life. Our groaning when the tent leaks is a little like our groaning when life gets too hard, when we need relief, and when we long for more.
“A house of solid masonry may need a crowbar and a pick to start its stones from their places, but feebler tools will soon overturn a tent and make a ruin of it,” preached Spurgeon. “The body is liable to dissolution from causes so minute as to be imperceptible—a breath of foul air, an atom of poisonous matter, a trifle, a mere nothing, may end this mortal life.”
Like a moth may eat at canvas, a mere nothing — a virus so small you can’t see it without an electron microscope — may end this mortal life. Our tents are weak. We groan for more.
Our tents are weak. We groan for more.
Our Home
We’re not stuck in these tents, though. We have a home. “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Paul makes it clear that our future isn’t as disembodied souls. He compares this to being naked (5:3,4). If you think groaning in a tent is bad, then being naked is even worse.
Our future is better than that. God will give us a new home: bodies fit for the new heavens and the new earth. “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven,” the resurrected Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:49).
No viruses, no illnesses, no accidents will be able to touch us then.
Longing for Home
When you find yourself groaning in the tent, it’s nice to know you can go home.
When you find yourself groaning in this life, it’s a good reminder that we have homes waiting for us one day. This virus, the aches and pains, illnesses, and wrinkles can only remind us that something better’s coming.
Knowing this helped Paul with his troubles, and it can help us too. “Ah, brethren, an hour with our God will make up for all the trials of the way. Wherefore, be of good courage, and press on,” said Spurgeon.
If you’re groaning right now, that’s normal. That’s what you do when you’ve been in a tent too long. Let your groanings lead you to long for your home.