Dear brother and pastor Rod has to preach tomorrow on the most beautiful and potent of passages: Colossians 3:1-4.

Four verses than can change everything…penned to Gentile converts with no more education than your average second grader (at best). Still Paul shoots high and hard.

Read it for your own. It will take less than 2 minutes.

Here is my reflection. It’s a typical modern gloss that may detract from the raw power…but I did my best.

“I have heard many complain that they did not want to be “so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly good.” But they are usually in no personal danger of this; in fact I have yet to meet a human being who was. I have met people who were in danger of being so “religious” that they were no earthly good; but never too “heavenly-minded.”

When people speak of heaven they often wax eloquent as if heaven were an ethereal dreamland. But heaven is more real than you or I. While we are but a vapor upon this earth, we speak of the throne of God as if it were a wishful wisp of smoke from our great-grandfather’s pipe. Not only is heaven our future, it is to be our present. We are to “seek the things above” - present tense - “where Christ is” - now – “at the right hand of God” . The closest I can come to interpreting the meaning of this verse is that we are to seek the reality of the Kingdom of God in our life.

Jesus Christ is the most heavenly minded, yet the most earthly good. Can you name one man who has ever been more earthly good than Jesus of Nazareth? Now can you name one man who has ever been more heavenly minded than Jesus of Nazareth? The truth is, the heavens themselves reflect the eternal glory of Christ, yet no man has ever been more earthly good than Christ, the “Second Adam,” God in the flesh.

The Christian who is heavenly minded, will always be the most active, Why? Because he wants company there, and will not be satisfied for any to be left out. To be “heavenly-minded” is to have the “mind of Christ”; and it is unfortunate that many of us want the old mind back. The eternal perspective is to be taught by God to see a bit from His vantage point.

Mac