When Moses realized he was coming to the end of his mission he gathered the people of Israel on the edge of the Promised Land and laid before them a clear choice.
“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! – Deuteronomy 30:19
Moses wasn’t offering them a choice between the present and the future or between the earthly and the heavenly. He said “Today I have given you a choice…and both heaven and earth will witness the choice you make.” Every day we make choices that either enlarge or diminish how we experience life.
We have a tendency to think of the earthly and the heavenly as two completely separate spheres. But Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is in our midst and he taught us to pray for God's kingdom to come and for God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus says we need to live in both spheres, one foot firmly planted in what is earthly, the other firmly planted in what is heavenly.
N.T. Wright, an Anglican Bishop who taught at both Cambridge and Oxford universities, puts it this way in his book Simply Christian: “Somehow, God’s dimension and our dimension – heaven and earth – overlap and interlock." Where do heaven and earth meet? They overlap and interlock within our lives. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.”
In Romans chapter 8, Paul describes how we should live in the space where heaven and earth overlap and interlock.
Life in the Spirit
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
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