The first fruits of the resurrection and the promise of its future fulness teaches us that an embodied existence in a physical, material world in not a one-and-done thing. We don’t spend some years on earth in a body and then go on to spend eternity as a spirit. If that were the case, I wouldn’t quite know what the whole point was of ever having a body in the first place. On the contrary, eternity will be spent in a body. And this means that the resurrection is the antidote to all our regret from unfulfilled bucket list items.

You don’t have to fret that you might never get to Bali. Or Paris. Or go skydiving. Or whatever. When heaven comes down to earth and the multitude of God’s family beholds his grand restoring and renewing work, there will be no regret over that one trip or experience that you were never able to do before you died, just as I don’t regret all the baby food I never got to try when I was younger. I’ve moved on. To better things. Christians would do well to loosen their grip on their preferred earthly baby food.

To be honest, the bucket list mentality strikes me as missing a certain God-centered sense of anticipation and faith-filled hope for all that is to come for the believer. God’s intent is not to take away this exciting earth and make all things new in the most boring way imaginable. He is not boring. And he will see to it that the creation which is set free from its bondage to corruption will be unimaginably more enjoyable and exhilarating than the current one.