Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now
The Altarpiece
[They] acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak
thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
Hebrews 11: 13-14 RSV
"Heaven" is the name seekers through the ages have given to this spiritual homeland.
For the first thirty-some years of my life, heaven and the Land of OZ meant much the same to
me -- fairy-tale places dreamed into being by people whose life in the real world was hard.
Very nice for those who could console themselves this way, but not, of course, for rational
people.
How I've been drawn-unheedingly, unknowingly, even unwillingly -- to a very different view,
is the story of this book. Heaven, I believe today, is not only real, but more real than
anything else. Real not just in some disembodied post-death existence -- though it will
continue to be real then too -- but real today, right where I am. Heaven, I believe, has
only one time.
Now.
And only one place. Here.
The Mountaintop
"Place" of course isn't the right word, just the only one we have. A place suggests a fixed
location where -- however distant -- l can imagine someday arriving. Above the altar of our
church in Mt. Kisco, New York, is a painting of the Mount of Transfiguration. Against a sky
of gold -- always in Christian art the symbol of heaven -- Jesus holds celestial discourse
with Moses and Elijah, while Peter, John, and James look on. As these three recall it later,
their rabbi's wind-tanned face began to shine with glory, "and his clothing became dazzling
white, far more glorious than any earthly process could ever make it!" (Mark 9:3 TLB).
At that transcendent moment it must have seemed to the three fishermen that their days of
homeless wandering were over. After years of trudging the dusty roads behind their
footloose leader, hadn't they reached the very courts of heaven? This was it! They'd
arrived!
"Shall we put up shelters for you and Moses and Elijah?" Peter asked excitedly. Move in,
stay right here?
But of course they hadn't "arrived" anywhere. Heaven is nowhere
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