Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now

The past, the present, the future -- heaven enfolds them all. Heaven behind me . . . All the way we walk before we know that the road itself is God. For me this part of the journey lasted more than thirty years. I was given hints of the truth aplenty, but I could not read them. It's only in retrospect that I know that every event of my life was a step on the Way that's been heaven all along.

Heaven around me . . . It's that part of the journey when dimly, wonderingly, always imperfectly, we catch sight of those streets of gold right beneath our feet. It's the strange, contradictory world of grief and joy, despair and hope, where I've lived these last forty years.

Heaven before me . . . This is the landscape where we'll spend longest, and about which we now know least. It's the heaven we'll experience after death, where all we can now be sure of is that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a place.

Heaven behind, around, before. . . no time or place that is not heaven.

You trace my journeys and my resting places. . . You press upon me behind and before. Psalm 1

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat-and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet,
"All things betray thee, who.betrayest Me."

Francis Thompson
The Hound of Heaven

Heaven behind me . . . the journey unaware. The trip we understand only in looking back.

In the summer of 1959, John and I traveled with our three children twelve thousand miles by car, collecting story material from Delaware to Texas to Alaska. In those pre-seat belt days, the back of the station wagon held a mattress where the kids could stretch out. Three-year-old Liz was usually the first to clamber over the backseat and lie down. Scott, age eight, and Donn, five, would continue a while longer to stare at the passing countryside.

"Wow! Look at that long freight train!"

If the spectacle sounded enticing enough, there'd be a stirring in