bringing heaven to earth -- a book review

Josh Ross and Jonathan Storment's Bringing Heaven to Earth:  You Don't Have to Wait for Eternity to Live the Good News is a book for which I've long for some time.  NT Wright's Surprised by Hope was a confirmation that the revolution happening in my faith about heaven had depth.  Ross' Bringing Heaven to Earth is confirmation that that seismic shift reaches out of the realm of the theologians and touches the daily spiritual life of Christians.  Jesus spends all of his time preaching and bringing the Kingdom of God.  He isn't referring to something in the distant future.  Instead, he's talking about the here and now, and the there and then.  This Kingdom is both present and not-yet.  It's an anemic Christian faith that longs for something distant.  It's a vibrant Christian faith that sees the Kingdom in our lives, here, now -- and knows that its fulness is yet to be.

Ross and Storment's Bringing Heaven to Earth is therefore a real treasure for the Church today.  It's a book that deserves a wide (and often) reading.  Using the foundation of Scripture and supported by the tradition of the Church, they show that while heaven is a fulfilled reality when "God calls us home"" it is also a reality to be lived out between now and then.

Jesus, they rightly insist came to give us new life -- now.  Our live is to be wrapped up in living with God -- now.  We yearn and long for a time when all is perfect and complete, yet we can't just sit and wait for it.  We are called to bring it into the reality of life now.  God's great plan is to care for the creation he has called "very good".  His plan is redemption and restoration -- and image that finds its fulfillment in the last chapters of Revelation.  As Ross and Storment put it:  "The ultimate Christian hope is not to fly off as disembodied beings to another place.  Our hope is that God is going to redeem and restore the world, and you and me along with it".  The Kingdom is where the world is as God intends it.  And it's that wold that Jesus ushered in at his Resurrection, and it's that world that breaks in in our daily lives.

This is a book you simply shouldn't miss!

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I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.