I've got a home in Gloryland that outshines the sun!

In the last 10 days, death has visited the congregation I pastor 4 times!  Last night, as a long day was ending, one in which sorrow visited in several different ways,  I myself thinking about Heaven. My thoughts were not about streets of gold or sitting down for a long rest. I yearned for a place where sin cannot enter, where tears are wiped away forever, and where I will know my Abba fully.  "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple." (Psalm 27:4, NIV)

Eternity is written into our hearts by our Creator. Solomon said, "God has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT) Dallas Willard, now with the Lord in Heaven, urged Christians to lift their vision, to ‘see’ beyond time’s horizon.  He says that a firm grasp on the promise of Paradise protects us from bitterness and depression. "I meet many faithful Christians who, in spite of their faith, are deeply disappointed in how their lives have turned out. Sometimes it is a matter of how they experience aging, which they take to mean they no longer have a future. But often, due to circumstances or wrongful decisions and actions by others, what they had hoped to accomplish in life they did not .... Much of the distress of these people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them..  the life that lies endlessly before us in the kingdom of God."  (The Divine Conspiracy) 

The frustration and futility that stalk us in this present realm lose much of their power when Heaven is in our heart! Right here, even now, we are eternal creatures. Yes, the bodies we live in are aging. This globe we call home is decaying, but you and I are alive forever in Christ!  Jesus looked Martha in the eye and promised “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live." (John 11:25, The Message) Eternal life begins now, not when we die. The hope of Heaven is ours today, not just when our bodies are in the grave! I am a citizen of Heaven, now by the grace of Jesus Christ.  I commune with the Lord of Glory, through the Holy Spirit’s immediate Presence. I am called to bring Heaven to earth, living in the earnest expectation of glories to come, while confronting the darkness of sin with the Light of Heaven, right now!   

Let’s be like Abraham. He heard God's call, grasped the reality of eternal life and lived the rest of days here on earth on pilgrimage.  He took some detours from the straight and narrow path, but he never lost sight of where he was going.  "By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise.”  Here is the key to his faithfulness. “Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations-the City designed and built by God." (Hebrews 11:8-10, The Message)

The ‘heaven’ of our modern imagination, that fills the movies, is far from the reality of Scripture. Misty fog enveloping transparent spirits floating in a ghostly realm, spirits living at the edge of human consciousness trying to reach us, are inventions of storytellers.  Heaven is a real substantial place, created by the same Person that thought up the refraction of sunlight by water moisture which produces the beauty of a rainbow. Heaven is beauty unfathomable. Heaven is suffused with the love which we see in Christ Jesus, who left His place to seek and save those who are lost.  The most beautiful music, the deepest love, the most stirring worship, the most blissful day - are just glimpses of what will be ordinary in eternity!  

So, by faith, reach out and hold onto Heaven. When life is overwhelming, when sin threatens to engulf you,  when all seems futile,  when disappointment breaks your heart - look up and thank God that He has written Heaven into your heart.  It is precisely the longing for Paradise that makes us unwilling to settle down and desire our best life now.   We are headed home!

The word from the Word is a portion of the ‘faith’ chapter. "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country-a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."   (Hebrews 11:13-16, NIV)

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Going Home

I've been feeling kind of restless.
I've been feeling out of place.
I can hear a distant singing,
A song that I can't write,
But it echoes in what I'm always trying to say

There's a feeling I can't capture,
It's always just a prayer away.
I want to know the ending,
Things hoped for but not seen
But I guess that's the point in hoping anyway.

Going home; I'll meet You at the table,
Going home; I'll meet You in the air.
You are never too young to think about it.
Oh, I cannot wait to be home

I'm confined to my senses,
To really know what You are like,
You are more than I can fathom,
More than I can guess,
And more than I can see with human sight.

But, I have felt You with my spirit.
I have felt You fill this room.
This is just an invitation,
A sample of the whole,
And I cannot wait to be going home.

Face to face, how can it be?
Face to face, how can it be?
Face to face, how can it be?

Sara Groves
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