No, no! Remaining here on earth is even less permissible for those redeemed by Jesus than for their Savior himself. They grow into one plant with their Lord and are thus cut off at the root from this world. To live in him is to live outside the world. Like pilgrims on a pilgrimage, they are no longer at home on earth but are on a journey to their real homeland. Whoever finds what they are looking for here below lowers them self [sic] beneath their true calling as a human being. They have no fellowship with God’s holy angels, but merely with the foxes, birds, and animals of the forest.
…Accordingly, whoever follows Jesus turns his back on the world. She repeatedly finds its charms fading. In her heart and soul she crucifies its glories. She does so not because she relinquishes a desire for happiness, but because she yearns for a greater, higher, richer, and more brilliant glory. In hope, he desires a glory through which already now his quieted heart finds itself swelling with a holy joy. This is joy in the divine splendor and pure luster of God’s kingdom.
…for all of you who regarded the world as nothing and were mocked and driven out of it, you will live ‘in the home of the seraphim.’ The precious word spoken by the Lord himself is for all of you who have suffered pain in your pilgrim wanderings: ‘In the home that is above are many rooms, and a place has been prepared for you there in my Father’s house.’
Taken from the new translation by James A. De Jong of Abraham Kuyper’s Honey from the Rock (Lexham Press, 2018), pp.7-8.
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