A Sacred Calling for Sacred Work

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created by him and for him” – Col 1:16

To envision the New we must invariably look to the Old. Throughout the gospel, it’s made clear to us that God is renewing our world, which is leading towards a New Heaven and New Earth. If this world is to become His dwelling place, then our job is to cultivate it wisely, to manifest and capture God’s image in our work. In other words, what we create is meant to be sacred. Theologian Richard Middleton gives us the Why behind what we do and how the Holy Spirit employs our imagination to lead us to what we are created for.

J. Richard Middleton is Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, NY. Born and raised in Jamaica, Richard did his B.Th. at Jamaica Theological Seminary, and serves as visiting professor of Old Testament at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology (Kingston, Jamaica). He holds an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Guelph (Canada) and a doctorate in theology from the Free University in Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Richard is the author of The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 and he has coauthored The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View, and Truth is Stranger than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age. His most recent book, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology, is hot off the press and copies will be available for purchase during the Expo. 

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