cheesy illustrations…

I’m doin’ ’em all the time, in every area of life it seems. Sometimes I get a good one. But here’s one from N.T. Wright, that I had to share.

In speaking of “resurrection”, the Jewish people believed that all of humanity would be physically resurrected someday way in the future, when God was going to do what God was going to do.

For Christ to be physically resurrected NOW, ahead of what was to come, FORCED them to change some beliefs about waiting for God to do something. One person, ahead of all the others. Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they thought. But Jesus was the Messiah. God WAS DOING something. They were to be involved in it. This was the beginning of the Christian church…

“…a rich old member gives to a college a wonderful, glorious painting that simply won’t fit any of the spaces available in the college and that is so magnificent that eventually the college decides to pull itself down and rebuild itself around this great and unexpected gift, discovering as it does so that all the best things about the college are thereby enhanced within the new structure and all the problems of which people had been aware are thereby dealt with…
…there must be some point at which the painting is received by the existing college…to enable the college officers to make their momentous decision. The donor doesn’t just come along, blow up the college unasked, present the painting, and then say, “Now figure out what to do.” “

The new creation has begun…