Skip to main content

Coming home


Daniel 12:13

As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance

Thought for the day – Coming home

If yesterday's verse about wise people suffering for their wisdom was a fun, perky way to start the day, then today's verse is, I think, probably a much nicer way to start our day. Today, we come to the end of the book of Daniel. It is the last of the five major prophets, and I think that, of all of them, it has the best endingone that brings hope to us, the people of God.

The Son of Man says to Daniel at the end of Daniel 12, As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” What a promise! And I don't think it's just a promise aimed at Daniel; I think it's a promise aimed at anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus: “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” I just can't wait. I don't know about you, but I just can't wait.

The thought of spending eternity with God in the presence of Jesusmy friend, my brother, my Saviour, my King—is just wow. It is simply amazing. And so, yes, I am absolutely taken by today's verse more than any of the others today. I just think we sometimes forget, as we are caught up in the midst of life, what Jesus has promised us: eternity with him. When he said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” that was a promise to all who could hear him: if you follow Jesus, that is where you will spend eternity. What an amazing promise! That is our allotted inheritance; that is God's gift to us for our faithfulness here on earth.


 

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What does it mean to put Jesus first?

What does it mean to put Jesus first? John 12:1-8   Philippians 3:4b-13 What does it mean to put Jesus first? I ask this because as always I try to find a link between the two lectionary readings and as I was thinking about the readings the thing that I recognized across both these passages was the thought that both Mary and Paul are putting Jesus first. In John, we have this wonderful account of Mary anointing Jesus. It’s a passage we think we know reasonably well. It’s not the only account of Jesus being anointed, and most Biblical scholars agree that this account is the same as the accounts found in Luke and Matthew. Details vary but essentially it is the same account. In the account we see Jesus reclining at a table and then Mary prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet and empty’s a whole jar of nard on Jesus. And then wipes Jesus feet with her hair. Two things strike me here. Firstly Nard was not cheap. John notes that is was the equivalent of a year’s worth of wag...
 Holiness What does holiness look like to you? Or when you hear the word holy what comes to mind. The reason I’m asking is because for a while now I have been thinking about holiness. What does it mean to be holy and whether or not we can truly be holy? We are commanded to be holy both in the Old Testament and by Jesus who said be holy as your Father in heaven is holy (Matthew 5:48).  John Wesley taught that genuine faith produces inward and outward holiness. He consistently argued that salvation must produce holiness of heart and life, but he never viewed the process as something that would be completed. He taught that despite the inner assurance and regeneration of character that results from knowing that you have been saved, it is never too long before we discover that there is still a root of sin within. However, there is never an occasion or state of true Christian discipleship that does not lead to a deepening of our love for God and for our neighbour and we become mo...
Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven   Thought for the day The blogger Jill Printzenhoff writes about a time how she went fishing and caught nothing and yet the fisherman next to her managed to pull out seven. They were using different bait and she describes it as not her day. She finishes her blog post with these words: ‘You keep striving, you keep working, and you keep on keeping on. Because some day when you cast your line . . . you will be at the right spot at the right time . . . and that day will be your day . . . the day you catch that all elusive fish!’ I believe that there is a time for everything under heaven and earth and sometimes, well actually, all the time we need to be patient and wait because the reality of the situation is we are working to God’s time. The writer of Ecclesiastes also says this about God’s timing: ‘He has made everything appropriate[b] in its time. He has also put eternity in...