Camp Sites, Heritage Buildings and Eternal Life
September 28th 2010 at 5:15pm
We’re just back from holiday. We spent most of it at a caravan park in the Yorkshire Dales. We were camping in a second-hand trailer tent (thanks Ebay). I haven’t been camping for ages, and I’ve never been camping in the caravan section of a camp-site. But with a trailer tent, that’s where you go. And the thing that struck me when we first drove onto the site was just how big and impressive most of the vans were. Whether they were caravans or camper vans, most of our neighbours had pretty serious kit – annexes with several rooms, running water, on board toilets, even satellite TV (I think we were the only ones who weren’t watching TV every night). You might say a home away from home.
But while they looked big and impressive when they were set up, the next morning they packed down to something that could be driven away. The large rooms and expansive seating arrangements, cupboards and sinks were all designed to be folded down and packed away. There was no pretence at permanence, they were very deliberately temporary.
What a contrast with a real building. Fountains Abbey, which we visited while we were camping, is almost a thousand years old. Its roof was burnt down by Henry VIII in 1539, but despite that the rest of the building is pretty much all still there. It was built to last, and last it has, in spite of all attempts to make it go away.
There’s a big difference between something made to last for a few days and something made to last for centuries. The difference is striking. And that’s why the apostle Paul, who knew a bit about tents and buildings that were built to last (lots of the buildings he would have seen on his journeys remain standing 2000 years later), uses them as a metaphor to contrast our present bodies with our heavenly bodies.
2 Cor 5:1 says ‘Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.’ He knew that this life is like a couple of days in a caravan park compared to the life to come – it’s short (messy?) and passing away. The life we live now is the camping trip; the eternal reality, though hidden, is the permanent building.
It wasn’t just rhetoric either – he lived as though only passing through, check out his list of sufferings later in the same letter (2 Cor 11:16-33). He was prepared to suffer now because he lived with an eye to the future, the eternal home. 2 Cor 5: 7-10 ‘we live by faith and not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.’
It makes me think – do we need to do some re-evaluating of priorities? It’s clearly not wise to overcapitalise on your tent while allowing your house to fall to rack and ruin – but that’s what we do if we live as if this life is all there is. So maybe it’s time for a camping holiday to put our lives in perspective – because that is what this life is, and we’ll only be wasting our time if we forget it!
Hi Rod & Zoe,
We enjoyed catching up on your news. How true is this about the earthly tent. We understand well that our time is temporal and life is transient . Barbara has recently been diagnosed with multiple myloma (Bone marrow cancer).
Our dear brother Paul Hopwood 63 passed away about two weeks ago after a courageous struggle with cancer.We say his life is not ended but just begun in a sense of our christian belief.
Penno is about to undergo huge renovations giving us a 300 seat congregational area. Every blessing Ed and Barbara
Hi Ed and Barbara,
What a shock it was to open up my blog and see your comment. I’ve not been on the blog for a while (as you may have guessed from the lack of posts) and I was totally stunned by your news. I had a little cry in my office. How strange to think that Paul – who was so very healthy and alive when I last saw him – is no longer with us. When I recovered to a degree my mind went straight away to a letter I’d just read in JC Ryle’s ‘Christian Leaders of the 18th Century’. You may know it. An aging minister (John Berridge 1716-1793) writes to a friend who’s just lost his wife – and to my ear it sounds remarkably insensitive to the man’s grief. But what is revealed clearly is his firm belief and confidence in – even his eager anticipation of – the joys of heaven. Berridge’s letter redirects our thoughts away from what we have lost – our friend – to what he has gained – eternal life. It’s a challenge to our unbelief, and reminder to find comfort in the God of all comfort.
This is what he said: