Centennial Review - November 2013
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Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Volume 8, Number 10 • November 2013
Publisher, William L. Armstrong Editor, John Andrews
DREAMS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CAN SHAPE OUR LIVES
By Roberta Green Ahmanson
How do dreams shape our lives? Christianity began in a culture in many ways similar to our own idolatrous culture and our brothers and sisters down through time have also faced the same question, and responded by allowing Scripture to drench their imagination and dreams. Those dreams shaped culture for more than a thousand years. So let us take a closer look at the relationship between such dreams and reality.
work and work to buy more and more things. We deaden the longing inside however we can—with work, sex, drugs, and alcohol. British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, who died from alcohol poisoning at 27, described her inner vision in her hit “Rehab”: “The Man said, ‘Why do you think you’re here?’ I said, ‘I got no idea, I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby so I always keep a bottle near.’” Then there are role-playing video games. Asians are among the most dedicated users. Thirty percent of South Koreans under 18 are at risk for Internet addiction. Imagine a Godly Future
We become what we worship. Our vision shapes We our concrete future. The Bible is very clear on what we this. Where there is no vision it warns, the people And Jesus goes a step beyond the prophets, will “cast off restraint” and “perish” (Prov. worship. O’Brian points out, for he speaks not just of 28:12). Today we live in a world languishing the future, but of the present: “Jesus invites his for lack of genuine prophetic vision, based in reality. This followers to imagine that the kingdom of God is at hand, affects our lives, our nations, and our world. and with it have come all those promised reversals . . . . the Citizens of Two Countries imagination was Jesus’ main target.” God has given us a heavenly vision, the New Jerusalem. The danger for all dream-losers reaches to our very identity. Christians in the past understood that they were citizens Psalm 135: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, of two countries—this world and the New Jerusalem. We made by the hands of men . . . . Those who make them will need to reclaim that vision—for our own sakes and for the be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” sake of the world. So what is the heavenly vision? What difference does it In his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, make in real time? Isaiah pictures a heavenly home where the brilliant novelist David Foster Wallace said: “In the daythere is no violence, destruction, darkness, slavery, prisons, to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing faint hearts, tears, or death. as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Scripture makes it clear that we have dual citizenship: Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to here on earth and in our heavenly home. For example, in worship.” Wallace took his life at 46 in 2008. Hebrews 11 we are told Abraham was looking for a city What we worship makes all the difference in who we are and what we do in the world. When scholars talk about the Roberta Green Ahmanson is a California philanthropist, writer, and religion reporter. She is board chair of the Museum of Biblical Art in New York. This essay “de-mystification” of reality in the West, they mean that a is adapted from her talk at Colorado Christian University on Sept. 18, 2013. materialist worldview has captured our imaginations. God Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance and his vision are dismissed as comforting lies. But since matter is not the ultimate reality, as the Bible writers knew, we seek other ways to meet a real longing. We
public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation. By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776.
Brandon O’Brian, an editor at Leadership Journal, speaks to the longing of our Korean friends when he writes that the Bible calls us to adopt an imagination “that helps us look beyond our own experience.” We must learn to become see what God sees, he says—to imagine, as the prophets did, a godly future.
earth shall bring their glory into it.
Accompany me now in your mind’s eye to Aachen, Germany, where Charlemagne between 793 and 805 built a whole church as a three-dimensional icon of the New Jerusalem. The church itself is designed to welcome Christ when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. Eighth Day of Resurrection The building is an octagon, representing the seven days of creation plus the eighth day of resurrection and new life. The ceiling was originally a mosaic, glittering and golden, showing the 24 elders of Revelation bringing their crowns to Christ. An inscription at the base of the dome informs us that all the numbers have meaning. The chandelier, given by Frederic Barbarossa in the 12th century, represents the wall of Jerusalem, here with eight gates instead of 12 in order to harmonize with the building. But it has 48 candles, 12 iron bars, and 24 golden globes, all multiples of 12.
Santa Praesede: Arch over the altar
whose architect and builder is God. Hebrews 13 says, “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city to come.” Then John, in Revelation 21, confirms what Isaiah prophesied and what Abraham knew. He sees the city we are longing for: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Exploring Ancient Churches Growing up in a Baptist church, I had heard those verses many times, usually in sermons about the rapture and the last days. But it wasn’t until much later that I began to see they had real consequences for life right here on earth.
Read the Passion story in stone.
In my travels I have explored many ancient churches, hoping to get in touch with what Christians before me thought, understood, and did.
Aachen: Octagonal ceiing with 24 elders
Before the year 1000, churches often depicted the New Jerusalem on the arch over the altar in glittering mosaic. An example is the 9th-century Santa Praesede in Rome. In other churches, the Last Judgment and Christ in eternal glory were seen above the door as one walked out. Santa Maria Assunta, on the island of Torcello in the Venice Lagoon, displays this image, which also comes from Revelation 21:
And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the
The gallery above, held up by 32 stone pillars given by Popes Hadrian and Leo III, is the setting for the throne where Christ may sit to judge the world. Research has found that it is made of marble brought from Jerusalem, perhaps even from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the 14th century, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV added a heaven-like chapel to honor Charlemagne and the relics of the Savior. His inspiration was the 13th-century Sainte Chapelle in Paris, built by the French king, St. Louis, to house the relic of the Crown of Thorns. That chapel, too, embodied the New Jerusalem.
CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The authors’ views are not necessarily those of CCU. Designer, Bethany Applegate. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel. Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at www.CentennialCCU.org. Please join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us restore America’s moral core and prepare tomorrow’s leaders. Your gift is tax-deductible. Please use the envelope provided. Thank you for your support. - John Andrews, Director
Scan this code with your smartphone to read this and previous issues online. Centennial Review, November 2013 ▪ 2
Walk through the Cross My favorite example, though, is the Cathedral in Naumburg, Germany. The church there became a cathedral in 1028, and a chapel to honor its founders was built in the 1200’s. Stepping into the nave, we see the choir to the east, and to the west a stone screen with brilliant red light filtering through, where we can read the whole Passion story in stone. There is the Last Supper; Judas taking the silver, his face a portrait of despair; then the treacherous kiss in Gethsemane and Peter’s sword severing the servant’s ear. There is Christ before Pilate, terror in the governor’s eyes; the flogging; and Christ struggling on the road to Calvary. Front and center of the screen is Christ on the cross, his outstretched bleeding arms forming the very lintels of the door. This may allude to a 4th-century commentary by the African Tyconius, who describes Christ as “the gateway” to heaven. On the left, Mary in agony. On the right, grieving John. Walk through the cross with me.
They were the same people who created the “market peace” to end wars for long periods to promote commerce. They created beauty, the beauty of the heavenly vision, and that vision compelled and empowered them to care for the poor, the hurting, and the living. Take an example from the last days of Rome. By 568 A.D. that great city was in ruins, ravaged by 150 years of Goth, Vandal, Byzantine, The heavenly and Longobard invasion. Once a city of perhaps vision compelled 1.5 million, Rome compassion. bottomed out at 30,000. Outside the city, continual wars turned fields back into swamps. Invaders threatened and sometimes took over onceproductive church-run farms. Malaria, cholera, and bubonic plague followed. Jobs evaporated. Onceflourishing estates were abandoned. Famine became a fact of life. Floods covered the city three or four times a century. Sewers and aqueducts needed repair. Pope Gregory’s Greatness The wealthy fled to the safety of Ravenna or even faraway Constantinople; to Africa or the Holy Land. But one son of an old Roman family, Gregory the Great, became pope in 590. Building on the existing infrastructure, Gregory set out to restore life to the city. He revamped rural papal estates to provide food for citizens, pilgrims, refugees, and urban poor, all in fair and orderly ways. Gregory also made peace with the invaders. He provided soup kitchens for the sick and infirm. He set up welfare offices or diaconiae in populated areas within the walls, administered by monastic congregations. “The Church rather than the Byzantine state . . . was responsible for providing for the urban population,” historian Richard Krautheimer wrote in his classic Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Gregory’s concern was not unique. Nearly 900 years later,
Aachen: Throne of Jerusalem marble
Blink your eyes. Ahead is light. As we enter the chapel, lift your gaze: the founders of the church stand poised to step down and welcome you. Beyond the altar, in stained glass, in radiant red, yellow, blue, and green, the prophets, apostles, saints, and virtues call out. Higher still, we see the Trinity and Christ in glory. All welcome you into glory, into heaven, into the realm of your ultimate citizenship. So What? But some may say: All this lavish architecture and imagery is well and good, but what difference did any of it make to the poor and hungry in their time? What difference did it make to the wars being endlessly fought around them? Primasius, an African bishop who died in 560, wrote that “the pilgrim church rejoices to be formed” after the heavenly Jerusalem to come. That heavenly vision was the basis for how they lived in the world. The people who built this vision were the same people who built hospitals and almshouses, even low-income housing.
Naumburg: Christ the Gateway
Centennial Review, November 2013 ▪ 3
Centennial Review
November 2013
Centennial Institute
Colorado Christian University 8787 W. Alameda Ave. Lakewood, CO 80226
Return Service Requested
Dreams of The New Jerusalem Can Shape Our Lives
In a world languishing for lack of prophetic vision, escapist materialism dominates but cannot satisfy. The heavenly glories imaged forth in churches a thousand years ago can help today’s Christians live more generously and joyously.
By Roberta Green Ahmanson
Charlemagne’s bust at his Aachen church, 805 A.D
in 1521, the Bavarian city of Augsburg faced a housing crisis for its working poor. The Fuggers, Europe’s most powerful banking family and Catholics, responded. The Fuggerai, the first low-income housing development in Europe, provides housing for the poor to this day. Blueprint for the Earthly City When St. Augustine responded to the 410 sack of Rome with his book The City of God, he reminded believers of their dual citizenship. His vision of the heavenly city became the blueprint for the actual city here on earth for most of the next 800 years. Then other dreams began to take over. In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis put it this way:
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.
Aim at Heaven Documented longing. The idols are failing. But we know what our brothers and sisters in Naumburg well knew. We become what we worship. Aim at heaven and get earth thrown in. Walk through the cross to glory. Live in glory and make earth its reflection. Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison described that longing on his 1989 hit album Avalon Sunset:
You brought it to my attention that everything was made in God. Down through centuries of great writings and paintings Everything lives in God. Seen through the architecture of great cathedrals, Down through the history of time…. Is and was in the beginning and evermore shall be. When will I ever learn to live in God? When will I ever learn? He gives me everything I need and more. When will I ever learn?
When indeed? From today onward, the rest of your life is before you. What you envision for that future will shape its reality. You become what you worship. When I graduated from college in 1972, When will my own vision wasn’t clear. I longed for a life of significance. I wanted to make we learn? a difference in the world. I wanted to know who I was and what God wanted me to do. But I was full of fear. However, my longing for God led me through my mistakes, my sins, to a deeper understanding of who I am, of what it means to be a child of God. I urge us all to stand with our brothers and sisters who, for more than 2000 years, knew what to do on earth because they knew they were headed for heaven. n
The German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand put it another way. Why, he asks, did Christ begin his ministry by making wine for a wedding party in the little Galilean town of Cana? His answer:
[At Cana] we find this divine extravagance, this unlimitedness of charity which reaches to the smallest detail. It is this divine tenderness which excludes no gift from its intention as long as it is a beneficial good to the person . . . At Cana joy was the theme.
An opinion survey in 2010 by Euro RSCG Worldwide found that 67 percent of Americans “felt the recession had served to remind people of what is really important in life. Forty-eight percent said they were actively trying to figure out what made them happy.”
Centennial Review, November 2013 ▪ 4
? ED SM
Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Volume 8, Number 10 • November 2013
Publisher, William L. Armstrong Editor, John Andrews
DREAMS OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CAN SHAPE OUR LIVES
By Roberta Green Ahmanson
How do dreams shape our lives? Christianity began in a culture in many ways similar to our own idolatrous culture and our brothers and sisters down through time have also faced the same question, and responded by allowing Scripture to drench their imagination and dreams. Those dreams shaped culture for more than a thousand years. So let us take a closer look at the relationship between such dreams and reality.
work and work to buy more and more things. We deaden the longing inside however we can—with work, sex, drugs, and alcohol. British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, who died from alcohol poisoning at 27, described her inner vision in her hit “Rehab”: “The Man said, ‘Why do you think you’re here?’ I said, ‘I got no idea, I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby so I always keep a bottle near.’” Then there are role-playing video games. Asians are among the most dedicated users. Thirty percent of South Koreans under 18 are at risk for Internet addiction. Imagine a Godly Future
We become what we worship. Our vision shapes We our concrete future. The Bible is very clear on what we this. Where there is no vision it warns, the people And Jesus goes a step beyond the prophets, will “cast off restraint” and “perish” (Prov. worship. O’Brian points out, for he speaks not just of 28:12). Today we live in a world languishing the future, but of the present: “Jesus invites his for lack of genuine prophetic vision, based in reality. This followers to imagine that the kingdom of God is at hand, affects our lives, our nations, and our world. and with it have come all those promised reversals . . . . the Citizens of Two Countries imagination was Jesus’ main target.” God has given us a heavenly vision, the New Jerusalem. The danger for all dream-losers reaches to our very identity. Christians in the past understood that they were citizens Psalm 135: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, of two countries—this world and the New Jerusalem. We made by the hands of men . . . . Those who make them will need to reclaim that vision—for our own sakes and for the be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” sake of the world. So what is the heavenly vision? What difference does it In his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, make in real time? Isaiah pictures a heavenly home where the brilliant novelist David Foster Wallace said: “In the daythere is no violence, destruction, darkness, slavery, prisons, to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing faint hearts, tears, or death. as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Scripture makes it clear that we have dual citizenship: Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to here on earth and in our heavenly home. For example, in worship.” Wallace took his life at 46 in 2008. Hebrews 11 we are told Abraham was looking for a city What we worship makes all the difference in who we are and what we do in the world. When scholars talk about the Roberta Green Ahmanson is a California philanthropist, writer, and religion reporter. She is board chair of the Museum of Biblical Art in New York. This essay “de-mystification” of reality in the West, they mean that a is adapted from her talk at Colorado Christian University on Sept. 18, 2013. materialist worldview has captured our imaginations. God Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance and his vision are dismissed as comforting lies. But since matter is not the ultimate reality, as the Bible writers knew, we seek other ways to meet a real longing. We
public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation. By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776.
Brandon O’Brian, an editor at Leadership Journal, speaks to the longing of our Korean friends when he writes that the Bible calls us to adopt an imagination “that helps us look beyond our own experience.” We must learn to become see what God sees, he says—to imagine, as the prophets did, a godly future.
earth shall bring their glory into it.
Accompany me now in your mind’s eye to Aachen, Germany, where Charlemagne between 793 and 805 built a whole church as a three-dimensional icon of the New Jerusalem. The church itself is designed to welcome Christ when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. Eighth Day of Resurrection The building is an octagon, representing the seven days of creation plus the eighth day of resurrection and new life. The ceiling was originally a mosaic, glittering and golden, showing the 24 elders of Revelation bringing their crowns to Christ. An inscription at the base of the dome informs us that all the numbers have meaning. The chandelier, given by Frederic Barbarossa in the 12th century, represents the wall of Jerusalem, here with eight gates instead of 12 in order to harmonize with the building. But it has 48 candles, 12 iron bars, and 24 golden globes, all multiples of 12.
Santa Praesede: Arch over the altar
whose architect and builder is God. Hebrews 13 says, “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city to come.” Then John, in Revelation 21, confirms what Isaiah prophesied and what Abraham knew. He sees the city we are longing for: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Exploring Ancient Churches Growing up in a Baptist church, I had heard those verses many times, usually in sermons about the rapture and the last days. But it wasn’t until much later that I began to see they had real consequences for life right here on earth.
Read the Passion story in stone.
In my travels I have explored many ancient churches, hoping to get in touch with what Christians before me thought, understood, and did.
Aachen: Octagonal ceiing with 24 elders
Before the year 1000, churches often depicted the New Jerusalem on the arch over the altar in glittering mosaic. An example is the 9th-century Santa Praesede in Rome. In other churches, the Last Judgment and Christ in eternal glory were seen above the door as one walked out. Santa Maria Assunta, on the island of Torcello in the Venice Lagoon, displays this image, which also comes from Revelation 21:
And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the
The gallery above, held up by 32 stone pillars given by Popes Hadrian and Leo III, is the setting for the throne where Christ may sit to judge the world. Research has found that it is made of marble brought from Jerusalem, perhaps even from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the 14th century, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV added a heaven-like chapel to honor Charlemagne and the relics of the Savior. His inspiration was the 13th-century Sainte Chapelle in Paris, built by the French king, St. Louis, to house the relic of the Crown of Thorns. That chapel, too, embodied the New Jerusalem.
CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The authors’ views are not necessarily those of CCU. Designer, Bethany Applegate. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel. Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at www.CentennialCCU.org. Please join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us restore America’s moral core and prepare tomorrow’s leaders. Your gift is tax-deductible. Please use the envelope provided. Thank you for your support. - John Andrews, Director
Scan this code with your smartphone to read this and previous issues online. Centennial Review, November 2013 ▪ 2
Walk through the Cross My favorite example, though, is the Cathedral in Naumburg, Germany. The church there became a cathedral in 1028, and a chapel to honor its founders was built in the 1200’s. Stepping into the nave, we see the choir to the east, and to the west a stone screen with brilliant red light filtering through, where we can read the whole Passion story in stone. There is the Last Supper; Judas taking the silver, his face a portrait of despair; then the treacherous kiss in Gethsemane and Peter’s sword severing the servant’s ear. There is Christ before Pilate, terror in the governor’s eyes; the flogging; and Christ struggling on the road to Calvary. Front and center of the screen is Christ on the cross, his outstretched bleeding arms forming the very lintels of the door. This may allude to a 4th-century commentary by the African Tyconius, who describes Christ as “the gateway” to heaven. On the left, Mary in agony. On the right, grieving John. Walk through the cross with me.
They were the same people who created the “market peace” to end wars for long periods to promote commerce. They created beauty, the beauty of the heavenly vision, and that vision compelled and empowered them to care for the poor, the hurting, and the living. Take an example from the last days of Rome. By 568 A.D. that great city was in ruins, ravaged by 150 years of Goth, Vandal, Byzantine, The heavenly and Longobard invasion. Once a city of perhaps vision compelled 1.5 million, Rome compassion. bottomed out at 30,000. Outside the city, continual wars turned fields back into swamps. Invaders threatened and sometimes took over onceproductive church-run farms. Malaria, cholera, and bubonic plague followed. Jobs evaporated. Onceflourishing estates were abandoned. Famine became a fact of life. Floods covered the city three or four times a century. Sewers and aqueducts needed repair. Pope Gregory’s Greatness The wealthy fled to the safety of Ravenna or even faraway Constantinople; to Africa or the Holy Land. But one son of an old Roman family, Gregory the Great, became pope in 590. Building on the existing infrastructure, Gregory set out to restore life to the city. He revamped rural papal estates to provide food for citizens, pilgrims, refugees, and urban poor, all in fair and orderly ways. Gregory also made peace with the invaders. He provided soup kitchens for the sick and infirm. He set up welfare offices or diaconiae in populated areas within the walls, administered by monastic congregations. “The Church rather than the Byzantine state . . . was responsible for providing for the urban population,” historian Richard Krautheimer wrote in his classic Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Gregory’s concern was not unique. Nearly 900 years later,
Aachen: Throne of Jerusalem marble
Blink your eyes. Ahead is light. As we enter the chapel, lift your gaze: the founders of the church stand poised to step down and welcome you. Beyond the altar, in stained glass, in radiant red, yellow, blue, and green, the prophets, apostles, saints, and virtues call out. Higher still, we see the Trinity and Christ in glory. All welcome you into glory, into heaven, into the realm of your ultimate citizenship. So What? But some may say: All this lavish architecture and imagery is well and good, but what difference did any of it make to the poor and hungry in their time? What difference did it make to the wars being endlessly fought around them? Primasius, an African bishop who died in 560, wrote that “the pilgrim church rejoices to be formed” after the heavenly Jerusalem to come. That heavenly vision was the basis for how they lived in the world. The people who built this vision were the same people who built hospitals and almshouses, even low-income housing.
Naumburg: Christ the Gateway
Centennial Review, November 2013 ▪ 3
Centennial Review
November 2013
Centennial Institute
Colorado Christian University 8787 W. Alameda Ave. Lakewood, CO 80226
Return Service Requested
Dreams of The New Jerusalem Can Shape Our Lives
In a world languishing for lack of prophetic vision, escapist materialism dominates but cannot satisfy. The heavenly glories imaged forth in churches a thousand years ago can help today’s Christians live more generously and joyously.
By Roberta Green Ahmanson
Charlemagne’s bust at his Aachen church, 805 A.D
in 1521, the Bavarian city of Augsburg faced a housing crisis for its working poor. The Fuggers, Europe’s most powerful banking family and Catholics, responded. The Fuggerai, the first low-income housing development in Europe, provides housing for the poor to this day. Blueprint for the Earthly City When St. Augustine responded to the 410 sack of Rome with his book The City of God, he reminded believers of their dual citizenship. His vision of the heavenly city became the blueprint for the actual city here on earth for most of the next 800 years. Then other dreams began to take over. In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis put it this way:
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.
Aim at Heaven Documented longing. The idols are failing. But we know what our brothers and sisters in Naumburg well knew. We become what we worship. Aim at heaven and get earth thrown in. Walk through the cross to glory. Live in glory and make earth its reflection. Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison described that longing on his 1989 hit album Avalon Sunset:
You brought it to my attention that everything was made in God. Down through centuries of great writings and paintings Everything lives in God. Seen through the architecture of great cathedrals, Down through the history of time…. Is and was in the beginning and evermore shall be. When will I ever learn to live in God? When will I ever learn? He gives me everything I need and more. When will I ever learn?
When indeed? From today onward, the rest of your life is before you. What you envision for that future will shape its reality. You become what you worship. When I graduated from college in 1972, When will my own vision wasn’t clear. I longed for a life of significance. I wanted to make we learn? a difference in the world. I wanted to know who I was and what God wanted me to do. But I was full of fear. However, my longing for God led me through my mistakes, my sins, to a deeper understanding of who I am, of what it means to be a child of God. I urge us all to stand with our brothers and sisters who, for more than 2000 years, knew what to do on earth because they knew they were headed for heaven. n
The German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand put it another way. Why, he asks, did Christ begin his ministry by making wine for a wedding party in the little Galilean town of Cana? His answer:
[At Cana] we find this divine extravagance, this unlimitedness of charity which reaches to the smallest detail. It is this divine tenderness which excludes no gift from its intention as long as it is a beneficial good to the person . . . At Cana joy was the theme.
An opinion survey in 2010 by Euro RSCG Worldwide found that 67 percent of Americans “felt the recession had served to remind people of what is really important in life. Forty-eight percent said they were actively trying to figure out what made them happy.”
Centennial Review, November 2013 ▪ 4
