Heaven

I had a conversation with one of my favorite mythic friends Saturday night. Bill's a truck driver. We were over at their house eating some awesome home made pizza.

After supper, Bill and I sat down with a cup of coffee and were talking about life, faith, struggles, hope--the basic stuff that all of humanity has been dealing with since the story of Job was written. Somehow we came around to talking about heaven and "what it's going to be like."

Be honest--the first image that comes to mind when I say "Heaven" is something like this:

Yeah, me too.

But for a couple years now I've been having some strange recoiling feelings from this kind of floaty, white, angelic, spirit, wings-and-harps image. Maybe not so much recoiling as much as, it just doesn't draw me in.

I think it's because there's no precedent for it here.

I'll make a suggestion that we're already getting some foretastes of what heaven will be like, but we aren't noticing. We're distracted by the clouds and the sound of harps when we close our eyes.

If we could erase the floaty vision from our mind's eye for a few months and start with a blank slate, I wonder what that picture above would look like?

Ok, this might be weird (but that's never stopped me from writing before). What if the way God made us somehow reflects what the "perfect state" would/will look like? What if our impulses and our habits and our emotions and our activities and our dreams and our fairy tales provide us with clues as to "what heaven will be like"?

What if life itself actually gives us glimpses of heaven from time to time? What if we can actually see or taste heaven once in a while?

I'm taken with wondering about the differences between Day One and today. The original garden was unfallen; there was open communion between God and his creation. There's something about the idea of a Garden that does grab me, unlike the picture above.

In the original Garden, let's just imagine that there were only three possibilities: good, better, and best.

Good might have been a state of pure potential. Moist, dark, rich soil--but you can't eat soil. It's good in itself, simply because there is such great potential. So, seeds are sewn, and hope springs up. Hope that one day soon, there will be great food to eat.

Better might have been watching the plant grow and the flowers blossom and the fruit begin to form and the rains falling to water the garden. And as things move along, there is greater and greater hope and anticipation of the harvest and then--

Best. Eating the fruit of the matured plant. The ultimate moment in the saga. The climax of the plant's life. Hope fulfilled. The cycle completed. One thing's purpose fulfilled in the service of another.

And in the original Garden, the soil would then revert to Good. And then it would begin again.

Good, better, best. Good, better, best. But not a static state of best.

There was planting and tending and waiting and harvesting and preparing and consuming--followed by planting and tending and...You get the idea.

This kind of thing is still happening. It's never stopped. There is potential all over the place.

Unfortunately, with the fall, another state was introduced, called Bad. Not only that, but things tend to slip now from better to merely good and even further to bad. And sometimes things stay bad and never get back to good.

Think of the essential human experiences. Among them are: heaviness, loneliness, forgetfulness, isolation, falling away. Just to name a few examples. They taint our experiences every day. They are the mud on the window, making it difficult to see clearly the seasons as they pass by.

I'll suggest that if we could live a week without them, then we would be amazed at the way things look.

What if heaven is a state kind of like we're in now, but with all the "bad" elements removed. What if the earth was again loaded with unfallen potential--and the cycle of Good, Better, Best was again placed in motion.

Where would we go with all that potential--walking side by side with each other and with the Creator and his Son, the King of the Universe. Wondering, thinking, planning, building, living, reigning.

Without the heaviness, the sorrow, the forgetting.

Take a nice deep breath of this air...

Ahhhh. That's better.

Now let's say that as the centuries of Good - Better - Best pass by that we have stuff to get done, places to go, things to discover. That we set about building, developing, improving, making things generally go from Good to Better to Best. That the King of the Universe sits on a throne somewhere and we get to fellowship with each other in complete openness and intimacy. That we get to have communion with the King, directly.

Revelation 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

I think it was John Eldredge who said to notice the direction that the New Jerusalem takes--it's coming down. It comes here.

Coincidentally, Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God as coming as well. Over and over. It's remarkable. Remember what Jesus told us to pray?

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Maybe "Heaven on earth" is more than just a figure of speech.

Matthew 25:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right,

"Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world."

Reminds me of Minis Tirith from Lord of the Rings.

Heaven on earth...

Anyway, that's what we were talking about last Saturday night.

The whole evening--the pizza, the coffee, the fellowship, the conversation, the daydreaming--was a "foretaste of glory divine."