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"Heaven & Earth Collide in the New Testament"
Beginning next week, our Wednesday night worship series will continue a journey we began in the fall by exploring those moments in Scripture when heaven and earth collide. In the Old Testament, we traced that collision through gardens and rivers, burning bushes and mountains, temples and times of silence, dreams, and seasons of scarcity. Again and again, we discovered that God’s presence was not confined to one place or one moment, but broke into ordinary human life in unexpected ways.
This year, we will turn our attention to the New Testament and ask a similar question: Where do we see heaven and earth coming together now? What does that collision look like when God steps fully into human history through Jesus Christ? And how does that same holy meeting continue in the life of the church, in communities and relationships, in suffering and joy, and in the rhythms of ordinary faithfulness?
Over the course of 14 weeks, we will walk through encounters where heaven and earth meet in flesh and water, wilderness and storms, tables and roads, upper rooms and gardens, grief and resurrection, fear and power. We will pay attention not only to places and events, but to people and experiences, moments when God’s nearness becomes visible, tangible, and transformative. These stories span different time periods, communities, and living situations, reminding us that God’s presence is not limited to ideal circumstances or spiritual mountaintops.
The goal of this series is not simply to study where heaven and earth collided back then, but to become more attentive to how they still collide today. Often, we miss these moments, not because God is absent, but because we do not recognize what we are looking for.
When I’m in Kroger or Target trying to pick something up for Whitney and can’t find it, she used to send me a picture of the item on her phone and say, “It looks like this.” Once I could actually see what I was looking for, I could find it much more quickly. These days, she just places a pickup order and tells me which parking spot to use, saving her the headache of my frantic texts and phone calls asking where everything is. But before that, the picture mattered. It helped me recognize what I would have otherwise walked right past.
The same thing happened with our boys just before Christmas. When asking for a specific Lego, pair of shoes, or shirt, they didn’t try to describe it to us. Instead, they pulled up a picture online and showed it to us. Once we had seen it, we knew exactly what we were looking for.
In many ways, Scripture does the same thing for us. It gives us images, stories, and encounters that help us visualize what it looks like when heaven and earth come together. When we begin to recognize those patterns, grace breaking into weakness, peace speaking into chaos, love kneeling to serve, hope rising from grief, we become better prepared to notice them in our own lives.
This series is an invitation to slow down, to look closely, and to learn to see. As we trace these New Testament encounters together, my hope is that we will not only deepen our understanding of Scripture, but also grow more attentive to the quiet, powerful ways God continues to meet us here and now. Heaven and earth still collide. The question is whether we are prepared to recognize it when they do.
I hope you’ll join us on Wednesday nights, beginning January 14 at 6:30, as we continue this journey together.
-- Travis
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