A New Heart for the Valley Week 4, Day 5
by David Joynt on March 15, 2018
Get Real November 16 Devotional
November 16, 2024
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about our future hope for seeing God, or what he called the visio beatifica, the beatific vision. This is the ultimate direct self-communication of God to individual people, in which they no longer see by faith but rather by sight. Job’s entire attitude about suffering and life was transformed by some such experience in God’s presence. Thomas called this our “final end” in which all our desires are permanently met in his presence and we know a fullness of beauty, truth, and love. Thomas labored on his theological work, the Summa Theologica, from 1264-1274, and it was finished at 3,500 pages! He stopped because he had a vision of God in Chapel, which made his efforts to describe God seem utterly inadequate. All finite images fail to capture God’s glory!
Recall your most profound experiences of beauty, or truth, and of love.
Thank God they are a shadow of what is coming!
FAMILY TIME
Take out a family picture.
Now compare it to the real thing.
How inadequate are pictures compared to the real presence!?
