Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

June 3 2023

A bit about me.

In 1975, after I sold business and home, our family moved from urban St. Catharines, On., to rural Tweed, halfway Toronto-Ottawa, where I had bought 50 acres, 20 hectares, mostly woodland. 

My first call was to a ‘witcher’, a water wizard, who plotted two underground streams. He told me to drill where they crossed, about 25 meters deep through sheer rock. Lo and behold, water gushed up: 150 liters per minute, enough to supply 10 dwellings. 

Years later, I put a frost-free handpump on the wellhead, ready for today’s uncertain times. We can do without food for 30 days, but without water only for 3 days.

My house. 

On a clear patch I built a passive solar, well insulated house, into a southern-facing hill, 2 storeys facing south, with large windows, and 1 storey on the north, a small window there. Later I added three solar panels and battery storage, just in case.

My garden.

I wanted a large garden, desiring some self-sufficiency, but discovered that the soil was sheer sand. But, then 48 years younger, I wheelbarrowed from a nearby farm pure black cow manure, days on end. Each year thereafter I added more compost.

Springtime is garden-time for me. Last year I bought a load of mushroom compost, which yielded such excellent results, that I had another batch this year. Soil is like my body: it needs feeding. 

The future has come.

Today, 2023, food prices have shot up and food quality has gone down: it is increasingly clear that the stuff we eat is mainly oil: apples from South Africa or Chile, oranges from wherever. Oil means global heating, and global heating is a sin against creation. Oil also is a poisonous substance which causes cancers and sickness, just as smoking does. What Fentanyl does to the human body fertilizer does to our soil: both kill. 

Our bodies, says the Bible, are temples of the Holy Spirit. Where the Holy Spirit resides, there is God, as we are made in his image. Karen Armstrong, in her recent book, “Sacred Nature”, shows how all ancient religions have seen ‘nature’ as holy. My working the soil is akin to prayer. 

Robin Wall Kimmerer in, “Braiding Sweetgrass”, writes, 

“Love the soil, and it will love back”, adding, “Redemption lives in knowing that you might also hear our hymns of joy when we too marry ourselves to the earth”. Both Genesis 3: 19: “Soil we are and to soil we shall return”, and Revelation 21 affirm this: “The new Jerusalem comes, prepared as a bride.” People adhering to Islam, in their prayers, touch the soil with their heads, symbolizing their affinity to the earth.

All this means that the soil I work is not my own: I am a mere servant: growing food there is an act of worship. The food products we buy are often Ultra-processed, doing more harm to the body than good. Capitalism has only one concern: Profits at all costs, including the cost of health. Food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

I try to emulate what my grandmothers would recognize as food: home-grown stuff. True, their diets were often one-sided: lots of potatoes and plenty of pure fat, straight from the pig, and sparse in greens. But then they were physically active from early morning to late at night, which made up for the poor nutrition. Now that I am on my own, food preparation is my concern, and I follow Michael Pollan proposal: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. 

Ever since I bought Francis Lappé’s book, Diet for a small Planet, about 45 years ago, my wife and I have been vegetarian. We have fared well with this regime.

How then shall we live?

That is the perennial question. A complete reorientation is needed. We are speeding toward the END, to the fulfillment of history, of which the arrival of AI, Artificial Intelligence, is a clear indication. We have been created in the image of God, a statement that defies precise definition, because God is beyond conception and articulation. Colossians 1: 15-20 is for me one of the most enlightening sections of Scripture. There Jesus is revealed as the ‘first-born’ of creation, and in the capacity of being pure human he created “All things”.  We need ‘I I’, “Incorporated Intelligence”, not AI, Artificial Intelligence. The key to divine insight is ‘service’, serving God through serving his creatures and creation, God’s Primary and Direct Revelation. 

Working my garden and writing about it, is a feeble attempt to prepare for God’s Garden to come when the New Creation is revealed.

May 27 2023

“God does not play dice with the universe”. Albert Einstein.

Einstein believed there are laws governing the universe, including the planet we call our own. Yes, that great scientist, Einstein, believed that Creation was regulated by norms, founded on wisdom. Discarding and disregarding creation laws results in chaos, clearly evident in today’s global weather events, and technological developments: “The leaders of the ChatGPT developer OpenAI have called for the regulation of “superintelligent” AIs, arguing that an equivalent to the International Atomic Energy Agency is needed to protect humanity from the risk of accidentally creating something with the power to destroy”, reports the Guardian.

Now, more than ever, we need proper prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer points to our self-generated planetary phenomena in its very first petition: “Hallowed be Thy name”. This phrase has nothing to do with God’s name. Karen Armstrong in her Sacred Nature, mentions that the Bible has 50 different names for God, indicating that God is beyond names.  That line from ‘the prayer Jesus taught us’ means that we have to honour the holiness of God’s signature on every created item. If we fail to do that, we play ‘dice’ with the planet, a place we have populated possibly beyond its carrying capacity.

What’s going on?

There’s a lot happening out there. And by that, I mean that everywhere, in the air, unseen to the naked eye, in the waters, not noticeable at first glance, in the soil, seemingly normal, forces are at work that determine the future of the planet. The Roman Philosopher Lucius Anneaus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was perhaps the first to note the universal trend that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. Everything, everywhere, has become saturated with poisonous, abnormal substances: hence Climate Change, which actually goes far beyond climate: it’s a “everything and everybody” change.

FIRE

Already, we’re into the billions of daily human-caused fires, but it’s when I started looking at engines that the numbers really took off. Globally, we’ve got well over a billion cars, a quarter-billion trucks, 200 million motorcycles, 25,000 passenger jets, and 50,000 ocean-going freighters (a third of which are devoted to transporting more fuel to burn). A single six-cylinder minivan running at driving-to-school speed – 2,500 RPM – will generate around 10,000 combustions a minute, more than half a million per hour. That’s a lot of fires. Add them all up and you get tens of trillions of individual combustions.That, roughly speaking, is the number of fires humans make every day – uncountable as stars in the universe. No wonder the man, Peter, who denied Jesus three times at a crucial moment in Jesus’ final hours, learned his lesson – as we all will do eventually- when he wrote, “the elements will be destroyed by fire and everything will be revealed.”

Today we live by fire: we will also die by fire. 

The hour of ‘revelation’ is now upon us. 

Bottom line: When you extract, upgrade, refine and burn toxic substances such as coal, bitumen, oil and gas at the rate we are burning them, decade after decade, we’re going to see changes. Atmospheric CO2 levels are now fully 50 per cent higher than preindustrial times, and it affects everything we care about, from fetuses to phytoplankton, from water to winter. 

Global heating will drive billions of people out of the “climate niche” in which humanity has flourished for millennia, a study has estimated, exposing them to unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather.

The world is on track for 2.7C of heating with current action plans and this would mean 2 billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past. Arctic News asserts that all humans will die with 3C increase.

Curiously, the segment of the population that claims to adhere to the Christian Religion, supposedly use the ‘Holy Book’ as their guide in life. If they do, they will discover that 1Thessalonian. 5: 21 urges us “to test everything; hold on to what is good”. 

 That points to careful thinking and thorough analysis. Karl Barth, wrote that ‘the message of the Bible is that God hates religion”. Religion makes many devout people choose Trump as their favorite: not surprising as religion killed Jesus.

God does not play dice with the universe: We do!

Romans 8 speaks to us today. It confirms Karl Barth’s observation that we must read the news while keeping an eye on the Bible. Look at verse 22: We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Beautiful. Completely applicable to today. Our world is pregnant with the new world to come. The earth is about to give birth. Believe. Celebrate. Rejoice. A new earth is on the way. Praise the Lord.

May 20 2023

THE ARK, THE CHURCH, AND US.

Ojibwe/Chippewa Tribe

The story goes that the Great Spirit was unhappy with man and created a great flood. The only survivor was Waynaboozhoo who had made a raft of logs and sticks for himself and other animals that were alive. They floated around for over a month, but the waters had not gone down.

This account is only one of the many ‘flood’ legends that live in the indigenous communities of the world. The most prominent, of course, is the Noah story, related in Genesis 6, where God expressed his dismay with granting humanity such a powerful position on the planet, endangering its continuous viability. So, God decided to make a new start with Noah and his family: “Build a boat made from cypress trees”. 

Cypress Trees?

I am not sure why Vincent van Gogh, that famous Dutch painter, who killed himself at the age of 37, adopted the Mediterranean cypress tree as a motif. Maybe because the tall, tapered, cone-shaped evergreen has always carried associations of mourning and death, and the FLOOD caused a lot of death. Of course, God knew the tree’s qualities, as they are like our cedar trees, light in weight and very durable. They grow tall and slim, easy to debranch, and, by divine design, excellent material to fashion a huge ship.

The Ark as a symbol of the church.

For many years the Noah family was busy in nowhere to construct this huge vessel: felling the trees, abundant in those days, where now there only is desert. Their act was a telling testimony, a warning, and, of course, also the butt of many jokes, just like today, when preaching for the Lord’s return is seen as odd, to say the least. The signs then were loud and visible: the signs now too are loud and visible. The decade-long Ark construction job, culminating in the mysterious march of the animals, failed to impress the people. Now the disappearance of the animals and the global heating out there too, is failing to change people’s mindset.

A New and Different World emerged.

After the waters had receded, God again spoke to Noah: see Genesis 9, the most under-appreciated passage in the Hebrew Bible:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:“I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

Two things stand out: 

1. God included all animals and placed them on the same level as humans, worthy of being God’s partners: that’s what ‘Covenant’ means, a solemn treaty between equals. 

2. No repeat of God’s direct intervention with creation: we are on our own: we are the new gods. God granted us absolute power over creation. 

What is our report card so far?

Not too great, frankly. Great disparity between the rich and the rest, even in the so-called West, where I live. Christianity itself, is in deep decline, while the need for comfort and faith is at a premium. Statistics show that people who attend church live longer and more content, because human interaction is necessary for happiness. We need others; we need fellowship, but life is so busy, that there is no time to prepare healthy meals, and no time to exercise properly: so, paradoxically, we die much sooner.

Here is the problem.

The church, in general, sees the Bible as God’s only word, and the salvation of the soul of prime importance. Our treatment of the planet mirrors our own busy and unhealthy life, assuring its death as well. Our economy regards the state of the stock market and economic growth as the sole criterion for a profitable bottom line, and never counts the damage to creation as a cost. Now that cost is due: expect ever higher inflation, rapid economic decline and collapse.

The Ark, the Church and us.

Karen Armstrong in her latest book, Sacred Nature, traces how slowly we abandoned the concept of the holiness of creation, adopted the heaven heresy, preferring the Scriptures over God’s Created Word, even though the Book of Job and many Psalms affirm that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwells therein”.

John 3: 13 tells us that nobody goes to heaven, and John 3: 16 affirms that God’s love for creation exceeds God’s love for his Son. 

Shouldn’t we do the same? Love Creation unconditionally! 

May 13 2023

THE NEXT SIX MONTHS.

A bold statement! The next six months will decide the fate of the world, thanks to the culmination of outright stupidity and lack of religious understanding. Human initiative has surrendered to Artificial Intelligence, signalling the end of learning, promoting the sovereignty of ignorance. Human stupidity manifests itself in the evil of Infinite Growth in a Finite World, and the continuous expansion of fossil fuels. The Christian religion has gone off the rails, has degenerated into formalism and dependence on institutions, evident in the rejection of sexual differences, and the crowning of Charles III in an Old Testament structure.

Consequences.

The war of Putin versus NATO is sheer human folly. Wars are waste, waste the world cannot afford. Wars are history-makers, now leading to collapse, not only of the victims, but of the victors as well. 

The current hot war is but a small part of our total war against Creation, our war against God, a war we are destined to lose, of which the next six months will be decisive. 

May 10 1940.

I write these lines in the week of May 10, a day grafted in my mind. Now 83 years ago, I can still vividly visualize what happened on that day: Germany invaded my country, the Netherland. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and I was sitting, me, almost 12 years old, on a low brick wall, surrounding the large Reformed Church, located on the corner lot next to our house on the north and to my elementary school on the east. 

In front of me was a triangle-shaped field, where we played soccer, giving me a perfect outline of the inner city, dominated by the 100meter high Martini Church Tower. A single-engine airplane circled overhead. The next day the German Army entered, the start of 5 years of brutal occupation. 

That day the world changed for ever.

Today, May 2023.

Today we are in a similar situation: the world changing forever: the final change. Wars do that to society, as suddenly history accelerates. The   outcome of that long, long war, from 1914-18, with a lull of 21 years, and its fateful conclusion from 1939-45, came at a cost of 100 million deaths, a full Ten Percent of those living on January 1 1900.

Now, May 2023, we face worse, much worse, as the fate of all living is at stake.

 I like detours. 

Detours expose me to new unexpected vistas. Augustine, that famous theologian in the 4^thcentury, when the church was in her infancy, and Latin the language of the still active Roman Empire – it would expire soon – said, “Si comprehendis, non est Deus”, meaning in the new Lingua Franca, English: If you think you understand it, you are not talking about God. 

The same is true about the future: if you think you know the future, you fool yourself. So, my heading is an impossibility. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next six months, not in minute particulars. I even don’t know what my brain, my intuition, will write in the next few minutes. 

But one thing I know: we live in apocalyptic times: the true nature of humanity and of creation is being revealed: the true nature of us, humans, is now plain: utter stupidity. The true nature of creation too, is revealed: sinning against creation carries its own penalty: suicide.

But there are trends. And there is the Bible, and there is humanity, well depicted there, as 1 John 5: 19 tells me, “The whole world is under the control of the evil one.” That is an undeniable truth.

Evil is Putin. Evil is Trump. Evil is war, especially our war against creation. The next six months will be decisive for Ukraine. It may rout the Russians, but we all will lose, because it cannot win the war: 40 million versus 160 million.

The same is true for creation. I dislike the word, ‘nature’, a human word. 

So, where is ‘creation’ heading?

Already Western Canada is ablaze in early May. Already Siberia is ablaze in early May.

The next six months will be decisive. I am intrigued by the ARCTIC NEWS blog. Here is a quote:

“Conditions are dire, i.e. greenhouse gas levels are high, an El Niño is on the way and sea surface temperatures are high, all contributing to the threat of massive loss of Arctic sea ice. On top of that, there are developments that could make things even worse. Loss of Arctic sea-ice comes with loss of the latent heat buffer and loss of albedo that threaten to trigger subsequent eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Consequently, a huge temperature rise threatens to unfold soon.”

The next six months? Remember Jesus’ words about the thief.

May 6 2023

THE ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE.

He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.                         Revelation 20: 2

 “If you are in a minority, and even alone, this does not mean you are crazy.”                                                             Orwell, in ‘1984’.

May 5 1945, saw the End of The German Reich, whose officials in 1939, when World War II began, boasted that it would endure for One Thousand Years. The entire Nazi venture, this truly evil empire, totally inspired by ‘that ancient serpent’, only lasted 13 years. 

The ‘One Thousand Year’ phenomenon, so prominently mentioned in the last Bible book, has given rise to immense speculation, dividing the church in ‘pre-millennian’ adherents whobelieve Christ returns after the millennium as a golden age, when the majority of the world has converted to Christianity, while post-millennian’ believers hold that Christ returns before the millennium, preceded by a period of intense tribulation.

There also are Amillennialism advocates, who do not expect a literal 1,000, but rather view it as Christ’s reign with his saints during the time between his two comings. 

All of them are wrong.

Johan Herman Bavinck, in his book on Revelation – and I translate – writes:

“Nowhere does the Bible speak of two returns of Christ, and nowhere else has the Bible ever referred to ‘1000 years of peace’ that is supposed to occur between these two returns, and this chapter – Revelation 20- even though it has definite mysterious passages, does not point into that direction at all. That’s all I want to comment here.”

So, Dr. Bavinck leaves us in the dark.

         Eugene H. Peterson, in his well-written REVERSED THUNDER, the Revelation of John & the Praying Imagination, does not mention ‘1000 years of peace’ at all.

         Here are two eminent and prominent theologians who have no explanation of an event that has divided the church, especially in the USA, engrossed as it is with The Last Days. Why then, would I be so bold and venture to comment on this puzzling passage? 

Well, I live in 2023. Both Bavinck and Peterson wrote their books more than 40 years ago, when Climate Change was not an everyday topic. We now have daily warnings of environmental perils, the latest being that plastic is everywhere: even in our bloodstream, even in newborn children. All purity is gone. There is no single drop of water in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet, totally uncontaminated; all soil, too, is polluted. The food we eat is basically oil.

         One Thousand Years ago.

One Thousand Years ago, the world’s population was somewhere between 250 and 300 million. Today there are more than 8 billion, a 30-fold increase. Then the biggest city, Constantinople, had an estimated population of 350,000. In comparison, London was a mere speck on the map, with some 20,000 citizens. Then Europe and America were entirely covered in forest. The only paved roads were the remnants of those left behind by the long-departed Romans.

Anno 1,000, the mechanical clock would not be invented for another 300 years. Chimneys would not be used in domestic settings for another century. The mathematical concept of zero was as yet unknown in Europe; so, too, was movable type. It was, to quote the great historian William Manchester, “a world lit only by fire.”

Fire.

2 Peter 3:10 applies here: The Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens – the clouds – will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. 

Methane means fire. ARCTIC NEWS’ latest headline is, Will Humanity go extinct in 2026? The scientists there see trillions of tons of buried Methane as the imminent danger. Methane, a flammable, odourless gas, is the main ingredient of the stuff we use for cooking and heating.

2026 could well be the beginning of the One Thousand Years of Peace. Satan and his followers to be imprisoned, so that they no longer can be the leaders and promoters of perennial perdition, with us as complacent planet-wide participants. With Satan bound, and us also out of the way, the earth will enter a long period of rest and recuperation, to be ready for the Redeemed of the Lord, who “will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” Isaiah 51: 11.

A word on AI.

         Will the Lord intervene as he did with the Tower of Babel, of which Artificial Intelligence is today’s equivalent? “If as one people speaking the same language can do this…… then nothing they plan to do is impossible for them”. (Genesis 11:6). Will God call their bluff again?

April 29 2023

DAY WITHOUT END.

Introduction. 

You most likely will not believe it, but, have a look at ARCTIC NEWS anyway. It offers the strong possibility that our global humanity, all living entities, actually, could vanish from the earth in 2026, that’s less than three years from now. 

Think about that: the scientists at Arctic News know the score there, know how our world’s weather depends on the North Pole region, its vanishing ice, and especially its buried methane, 87 times more lethal than our very own CO2. 

I suspect, however, that you will shrug it off as unimportant. After all, there are other matters to talk about, such as in Canada, hockey, in the US, baseball, and in ROW, the Rest of the world, soccer, of course.

But is anything more important than universal extinction? And Life Eternal? If, as I believe, our current life is just a trial run, shouldn’t we prepare for ‘real life’? Or has the present phase no purpose at all? Life ends, and that’s it? 

No. An emphatic ‘no’. I sincerely believe that it is the task of the church, and, especially our very own duty to prepare for ‘the real life to come’, which I, falteringly and, yes, totally inadequately, have tried to imagine. 

So, what is real life? For that, go back to my book. Oh, yes, look at the first chapter, to assure continuity.

DAY WITHOUT END

CHAPTER TWO

Now with the apple eaten, my body invigorated, my mind pristine, I sit up and it seems to me that my body movement has a double effect, because the fog around me and also within me has gone. Light is shooting out from everywhere, illuminating my surroundings. Within me it generates a strange, new power which seeps through me and makes my body sparkle and glow from top to toe. How wonderful.

My mind starts to race, catching up on lost time. My thoughts go in overdrive, and I close my eyes for just a minute to slow down. My goodness. First confusion, then too much speeding. What’s the matter with me? I tell myself to find a proper balance and take it easy, but that is easier said than done. My entire system is still too much possessed by my former self, but it does not worry me. I actually welcome it, because I know that all things will work out.

And they do. Of course. I now sense that the process is complete, that both body and spirit are in balance. I feel it in the tip of my fingers and in the hairs on my head. I feel it in the nails on my toes, in the crevices of my brain. What a fantastic feeling. I stretch my arms and straighten my legs so that, fully extended, I lie on the warm soil. One last yawn, and I find myself laughing, still oblivious to the presence of that mysterious man. In a flash my thoughts go back to the first day when I was conscripted into the army, trying to adjust to an atmosphere where every minute was regulated, a world of uniformity, of unconditional obedience. What a contrast! Instead of regimentation then, freedom now; instead of learning the vice of destroying then, building and beautifying here.

The association of ‘beauty’ reminds me of Jesus’ words about the flowers of the field, making the meadows more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory. What about me? A garland of flowers on my head and some figs leaves, perhaps? No, not that, but yet, nakedness is somewhat monotonous, even though my skin is a marvel to look at.

I sit up. I see the flowers and they see me. I know they do. I feel an urge to talk to the flowers and tell them about myself. What has gotten into me, I wonder. I never in my life have talked to flowers before. I glance at Cornelius, whom, I think, knows exactly what is going on. Never mind, here things are different. I tell the flowers that I would like to look more festive, and they understand. Unbelievable. Stretching and bending and turning they seem to say, “Pick me, pick me, I am beautiful, my colors suit you. God will love me on you, we are here today and gone tomorrow, so, why not use me?”

They, too, are full of joy, liberated from the dirty air that made them sick and caused many to disappear. Touched by their spontaneous generosity, I carefully and selectively accept their self-sacrifice, gathering flowers and grasses and weaving a skirt and a necklace, Hawaiian fashion.

Confident in my new aromatic dress, I stand up, ready to show myself. The effort is energy-less. I take a step and feel like I’m floating in the air. Wow! I marvel at my fluid movement and love the elasticity of my limbs, so lithe, so flowing, my muscles are so resilient, my joints like well-oiled links. My entire body operates like a perfectly adjusted instrument, tuned to a tautness I never before experienced even at my most physically fit. I dance and leap and jump and run and zigzag just to try out my new body. What an instrument! Unequalled quality! Superb mastery! The soil feels spongy, cushioning my steps, as if the earth gives each step a tiny boost.

Now I am complete, come into my own. I start to sing, beginning a scale as low as I can manage and rising easily two, even three octaves. My voice is pure and beautiful, or so it sounds to me. But, then, perhaps, in my exalted state, am I prone to exaggerate? So what?

I suddenly stop singing, sensing that my voice has awakened the universe. As if shaken out of a deep sleep, I now hear the birds in the trees, the bees in the fields, the wind in the branches, the hum of the insects all tuned in a perfect harmony, singing to our God, Creator and Father.

I have always tried to look after my body because the Scriptures called it the temple of the Holy spirit.

Funny to think that the bible no longer has any significance here. Gone are the written testimonies of the saints of old. Soon I will be able to talk to them and hear from Adam and Abel and Abraham and Zachariah the full story of their lives.

What a change, really. Just as my body is like a feather in the air, like a bird in the sky, totally unfettered, totally at ease, so my mind is totally pure, totally de-tensed, un-fogged, un-burdened, un-spoiled. Eager are my eyes to embrace the excellence of my creator. My ears are attuned to all sorts of sounds and at once I can place their origin.

I hear the call of a bird and I know its shape and color, but not yet its name.

I feel the wind, and am conscious of its intention, whether it will bring a gentle rain or a refreshing breeze. I hear the call of an animal and know its form.

Look there, a deer is approaching me, not shy, not bold, his eyes glancing at me. He nods his head, as if in greeting. He nibbles some pure and succulent grass. I notice an antler shorn off or broken, from mating and carousing. How re-assuring. Their sex instinct is still intact.

Would this apply to humans as well? I had often wondered about the place of sex, of reproduction, in the new creation. If it applies to animals, as I assume, will it then not apply to God’s very image bearers?

Here I am, not even having met another human, and already my thoughts turn to sex and that is also re-assuring. I am still human after all. Would God, in eternity, deprive me of one of the greatest experiences I had in my former life? Of course not.

What shape will this take? I will find out. I am sure that many surprises will come my way. It will take some time to get used to the new me, to learn about myself. But then, what is time? With a smile I recall keeping track of my running time with that silvery watch bought at a Montreal flea market for ten dollars. Now I have all the time in the world. Whether I spend a second or a thousand years to look inside myself, it matters no more. How about this new body of mine? It feels fine now, but will it notice the difference between one hour without food and one year? Or sleep? The air is so pure here that my body probably can do without sleep. Sleep, after all, is a sort of death, a time to forget, a time for restoration, for sorting out in dreams the many conflicting messages we were bombarded with. No, sleep is out.

Light. The Light is everywhere. There does not seem to be a single source of light, but there are myriads of lights. What a treat to again walk in the bright daylight. No radio here to warn me about ultra violet rays. I look up at the sun, its light again like the eye of God, no longer a harbinger of evil.

A soft light encompasses all objects. The deep green trees sway in the soft breeze, their branches bobbing, birds happily hopping on them.

Birds. I’ve never seen so many different ones, some singing, some feeding, all colourful. I walk up to an unusually brilliant one and see a head of deep satiny yellow; at the throat a patch of irreverent green, the breast, the back, the wings a golden brown, and from under the wings long bright red plumes, fanning out behind a large ceremonial cloak. It must be a bird of Paradise, now no longer a waste of beauty, no longer living out its charms in wild, inhospitable areas. Now, unafraid, proud to show off its grandiose splendor, without fear of being caught and caged and sold at a high price. There I spot some sparrows: even these grey birds now shine in a silvery tint.

And then the apple came. I clearly recall it now. It just plunked into my hand as if from nowhere. Where did it come from? Is there an apple tree close by?