the ultimate you

The other day I came to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 on my reading plan through the Bible.  I am kind of strolling through the Bible rather than walking through it and I seem to sit down on a park bench frequently during my stroll.  But this chapter resounded loudly in my heart as it gave a clear presentation of the Gospel message based on the facts: the fact of Jesus death and His resurrection.  The chapter went on to talk about the hope of heaven and how we have to die like a seed dies in the ground so a plant can grow into a much more glorious form than the seed.  I considered this and decided that the one thing that I will recognize and be most familiar with when I cross into Heaven will be my own personality.  My body will have changed but my inner person...heart, soul, mind will carry on.  If we didn't recogize our familiar personality in Heaven I don't believe we'd know that we had been somewhere else for a lifetime and now were in a new place.  I don't think we would appreciate our heavenly home if we didn't somehow remember the earthly dimension.  Then I thought about whether I was ready to take this personality...this heart, soul, and mind to Heaven yet.  I realized that the Lord is developing much of this eternal dimension of my life even now and I am grateful for the growth that is taking form here and that can continue in the next dimension.  Of course death can occur at any step along our earthly journey, but I hope to remember that each step can be a growth step that is forming the inner person for an eternity in God's presence.  He is not changing but we are!   1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone will say, "How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" 36 Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. 37 And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body.   blessings, Rob Smith