Eternal Life

A very good friend wrote this to me today:

I never thought I would survive the day when my mother passed away, but I have seen it, and I am still here. I keep wanting to go home and find her there. I can’t though, for she is everywhere. There is a quiet wellspring of inner strength, a deep reservoir of life. Even in the face of death it remains, it supplies, it cannot hear cries of emptiness for it knows not of such a thing.

Oh, for the waters of life. Oh for the comforts of heaven. We cannot fully understand either one, not within the same breath.

One thing that we can count on: Heaven is never swayed by the absence of its comprehension. It is a place for the dissipation of fear and pain and heaviness and the shaking of a transcending soul. Heaven is the place where you don’t need to own anything, yet you are able to claim everything.

Mama was God’s painting. Now she is his masterpiece.

You are my kind spirit with hands upon my head. You, who prays and listens and moves to the beat of a beautiful, loving heart. God’s good and faithful servant.

Vicki’s brilliance and powerful understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven never fails to touch me and to invite me deeper into God’s heart.  What particularly struck me today were these words: “Heaven is never swayed by the absence of its comprehension.”

Heaven just is.  It is the state of perfect knowledge of God.  As Jesus says in John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Heaven, eternal life equals knowing God fully.  Now, we know only a little.  As the Apostle Paul says, we see through a glass darkly.  Much is murky, incomprehensible, distorted by our own lenses and preconceptions about God.

But heaven–we shall indeed know God.  More, we can take those steps into heaven right now, as we seek to really know God.  Not just know about God, but to know God in love and self-giving and the giving and receiving of reconciling grace.

Much of our knowing of God is not yet, but there is indeed an already to this. God is present and is available to be known.  How?  Read your Bible, sit still to pray multiple times a day, and serve the world.  These actions do not bring salvation. They are a result of our free gift of salvation through Jesus the Messiah.  As we receive that gift, and let it transform us, our eyes are opened to the real knowledge of God.

My prayer for today, “Loving God, thank You for the fathomless gift of the knowledge of You.  Thank You that I can know heaven even now.  Open my eyes to this place called the Kingdom of Heaven so I may see it all around me.  May I be an agent of expanding that kingdom of love.”