A New You

By Cheri Cowell –

With all the talk at the beginning of the year of diet plans and exercising our way to a “new you,” it makes me think of the “new you” promised us in the Bible. We talked often in my childhood home of what heaven was going to be like. We spoke of the people we loved who had gone before us and what fun they must be having in the perfect place God had prepared for them. We just knew that my great-grandmother, Mumsey, was in a perfectly outfitted kitchen, baking heavenly treats for the heavenly host. We knew my grandfather was in the woodshop building beautiful pieces of furniture for the many altars in heaven. I now appreciate the gift my parents gave me in providing those happy discussions of heaven. My father was a diabetic and took insulin shots three times daily from the age of nine. He is now in heaven and I am grateful he no longer suffers that pain because he has a new body. One day I know I will be with him again and will hug him with my new body. What a gift that assurance is. Do you need to be reassured today of that hope?

In today’s Scripture, Paul contrasts our earthly bodies (tents) with our resurrection bodies (eternal house in heaven- heavenly dwelling). Our earthly bodies make us groan, but when we die we will not be naked (without a body). We will have new bodies perfectly suited for an eternal life with Christ. What a hope! What a promise!

PRAYER: I praise You, God, for Your promise of a new life with a new body when I die and go to live with You. Thank You for the reassurance that those I love are no longer suffering in their earthly bodies; help me stay focused on that promise, that hope, when this body makes me groan.

BIBLE VERSE: “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge” (2 Corinthians 5:1-5 NASB).