Just a tent

In the Sunday school class Damien and I attend there are a handful of older friends who greatly enrich the group with their questions and comments. We listen to a chapter of 11 Corinthians on tape and then we converse about it. I love this kind of Sunday school. Two Sundays ago, I felt like I had never seen this particular verse before: "For we know that if the TENT which is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a HOUSE not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." All that we have in this life, all the wonderful and amazing people, places and things that we observe and interact with is likened to a TENT! Now to me, the word "tent" conjures up words like unstable, dirty, uncomfortable, a very temporary shelter that could blow away quite easily. This verse says that's what our earthly body, home and world is like! It will all be rolled up and pitched one day and there His people will be on the other side of death- wide-eyed, mouths open in wonder standing speechless in eternity where the real beauty begins - "houses eternal in the heavens."