A Down-to-Earth Faith

Some people are very down-to-earth. You’d describe them as grounded or as having their feet on the ground. They are people of common sense, people who are realistic about life and how life works. They don’t necessarily lack ambition, rather, they’ve a keen sense of the hard work needed to make a difference in the world and to make one’s dreams a reality. Other people have their head-in-the-clouds. You might describe them as day dreamers who drift from idea to idea with little understanding of the commitment or initiative required to make something a reality. They live for something off over there, in the future, in another space or place.  

The Christian faith is intended to be very down-to-earth. The overarching trajectory of the biblical story is down to earth; God always seeking to bring heaven to earth. In the Garden of Eden God walked with man, God dwelt with Israel in the tabernacle and the Temple, Jesus came from heaven to earth, Jesus’ prayer was that God’s will would be done on earth as in heaven, Jesus is coming back to earth, heaven and earth will one day be reunited. The Christian faith isn’t about escaping from here to there, from earth to heaven. It’s about partnering in God’s great mission of bringing heaven to earth. It’s a sleeves rolled up, hands dirty, get stuck in, feet on the ground faith. A faith that lives out of restored relationship and seeks to help restore people to right relationship with God, self, each other and the rest of our creation.

The final destination is this earth; renewed, restored, reconfigured and reunited with heaven. Not a golden city in the clouds. If you’ve got your head-in-the-clouds you’ll live this life, subconsciously assuming that ultimately it counts for nothing as long as you get ‘there.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. Life is a precious gift. It is to be engaged in, enjoyed, savored and celebrated. It is the opportunity to live out a down-to-earth faith, a heaven on earth faith, which in practical ways loves, serves, gives, encourages and reflects the love of Christ to the world around as a taste of how things will one day be.