Revelation 6:9-11: Heavenly-minded.

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters, were killed just as they had been.” NIV

We are already almost one sixth of the way through the new year, and getting close to one third of the way through ‘Revelation’. Although I approached this last book of the Bible with a good amount of self-confessed trepidation (and I hope I will never lose that sense of standing on holy ground), the more I read, the more aware I am of the reality of that other world. It is, after all, just the other side of the wardrobe door (to use C.S.Lewis’s image from his Narnia books).

It was C.S. Lewis, I believe, who said something along these lines, that it is, by and large, the case that as Christians have come to think less and less about the world to come, they have had a reduced impact on this world.

It is true, I’m sure, that you can be so heavenly-minded you are of no earthly use. But is not equally possible to be so earthly-minded that you are of no heavenly use?

There is surely a balance to be struck.

Don’t forget that these words are in the Bible:

‘’Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things…’’ (Colossians 3:1,2).