Saturday 18 February
Mark 9:2-13
An all-too-common tendency is to avoid thinking about heaven. We are more inclined to congratulate ourselves on our realism, pragmatism and having our feet firmly on the ground. We can fear being too heavenly minded in case it detracts from being of earthly good! To ponder, contemplate, anticipate or even enjoy the thought of heaven we consider presumptuous. It is encouraging and heart-warming to know that Jesus taught differently.
In the transfiguration of Jesus we see an image of the effect of the divine life suffused by the knowledge of God’s love. The radiant and transfigured body of Jesus, illuminated and infused with the life of God, gives us a glimpse of the heavenly new creation which is our hope and inheritance. In the transfiguration we are given an insight and revelation into the beauty, glory and wonder of the heavenly life. This is our hope, our call and our destiny – to share in the joy, glory and victory of heaven. Through the cross and resurrection we have become partakers of and participators in the life of Jesus. It’s hard to think or imagine that our bodies will one day be so beautiful and radiant with the love, life and light of God. We can either dismiss such a thought as wishful thinking or seek to reflect and ponder on this glorious truth of our faith. In the transfiguration of Jesus we are given a foretaste of this heavenly reality.
The beauty and awe of the transfiguration overwhelmed Peter, making him incoherent – he wanted to hang on to that moment. The Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948) made this comment about the beauty of the transfiguration: ‘The transfiguration of the world is the attainment of beauty. The kingdom of God is beauty. Art gives us merely symbols of beauty. Real beauty is given only in the religious transfiguration of the creature. Beauty is God’s idea of the creature, of man and of the world.’
It is as we contemplate the beauty of the resurrected, glorified and transfigured Lord that we glimpse the joy and hope of our heavenly destiny.
‘Lord Jesus Christ, deepen within me today a confident and expectant hope in the resurrection of the body and allow your grace to transform and transfigure me each day.’
James 3:1-10 • Psalm 11(12):2-8
Mark 9:2-13
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