Heaven

It has been frustrating for me, the difference between myself and other people. It's so hard to want to engage the culture and the city so much, yet feel held back by the people I live with and am surrounded by. My idea of a full week includes a couple days of homework, going to my classes, and spending a huge amount of time in the city exploring and meeting people and having all kinds of experiences, going to two different churches, etc.. Other people's idea of a full week includes complaining about classes, not doing any work, sleeping through church, watching tv, being online, etc. I understand that I'm fairly unusual for most of humanity; but I can't understand why you would want to come to Australia to immerse yourself in American tv shows, American friends, and spend lots of time thinking and talking about America and how much you miss it.

This is not saying that I don't miss people in America!!! It's simply saying that I'm very content to spend one morning/afternoon a week putting up a blog post, catching up on facebook, and getting my e-mail taken care of. I don't want to be on the phone three hours a day and online another two. I like doing things, not thinking about other things I could be doing or will be doing in the future.

There are people I miss horribly; there are people I kind of miss; there are people I miss because I don't conflict with them anymore; and there are some people that I miss precisely because they have fallen to the periphery of my mind and I don't consciously think about them all the time.

It all plays into a spiritual/theological phase that I've been going through: I don't want heaven. Eternity scares the crap out of me. I can't think of anything more pointless or boring. I don't know why anyone would want that. It scares me; and it scares me that it scares me. That's not what I'm supposed to feel as a Christian, right?

I did write a long rant on this, that I'll try to get up mid-week sometime.


One of the things that strikes me about this is the number of people that I really miss that I don't really know that well. People like Anthony, Tommy, Libby, Jim, Carrie, Chris, Scott, or Abbie that I met during the summer that I only knew for the period of a week. these are people that are very dear to my heart. I loved spending time with them, and my spirit was so refreshed by getting to know them and spend even just one week with them. And my heart hurts to think of the very good possibility that I won't ever see some of them again.

How am I supposed to think about that as a Christian? What does that mean for my life?

For me, I have chosen (though it may be theologically faulty, I don't claim to know) to use that as the lens that I view heaven through. Heaven is going to be more than simply endless praise to God - which, admittedly, I usually tend to view as people sitting/standing/jumping around and going crazy in something like a church setting. Granted, I love doing that, and it's very much a part of my identity. But there is so much more than that!

I think of the kingdom of God, of heaven, as a party (which blatantly steals the title of a book by Tony Campolo that I have yet to read). I think of it as a place where the party of 4444 will occur. For those of you who don't know, that's the party that Dr. Bressler wants everyone to come to so we can fellowship and meet up with one another once again.

I want heaven to be a place where I can truly love people. Where I can spend all the time in the world with them, where I can get to know them, where I can see them through the eyes of Christ and love them perfectly. Where there isn't a bonding of spirits that leaves the flesh so disappointed at having to part. Where we can know and love each other in ways that we never had time or opportunity to do on earth. Where we can be united because of our love for Christ even as we experience the diversity in that love that we share.

We hit on this the other day as we were walking around, and someone made the point that we can't forget about trying to enact the Kingdom of God on earth - indeed that is one of our chief commands as Christians. And it's probably more important than wanting to be in heaven - especially if you come to a place where longing for heaven becomes escapism.

And again, by no means do I want to ignore this. I want to get to know people here. I want to be in relationship with them. I want to love them ; and I want to love them as Christ would love them, though I will admit I usually do a fairly lousy job of that. I want my love to be marked by the fruit of the Spirit and by a Christ-like attitude, I don't want it to be a hooked love that simply points back at me in the end.

I want to see people in unity, in community, loving each other and taking joy in each other's presences. Being edified and built up by each other's spirits. That's what makes people stick out so vividly in my memory and in my mind and in my longing - the people whose spirit reaches mine, the people who I miss even though I spen (t/d) such a short amount of time with them. I want to have more and more of those experiences on earth. And I want to see those around me having them on earth. And I want to see joy and laughter and mirth and love flow in abundance, even as they come out of the tears and the struggles and the strife that so often mark our experiences here on earth.

But I know that those things are impossible to attain perfectly on earth. And that because of the fallen nature of man, and indeed of my own fallen nature and selfishness, they are almost few and far between. May Christ in me work against that; may the Spirit guide me and my actions so that I will love those around me purely, and not for my own sake; but, overall, may the Father direct my thoughts and my longings toward heaven, so that my treasure - the joy of other people's spirits and souls and lives and loves - may be in heaven, and not on earth.

Amen.

New Pictures! Let me know if you have trouble accessing them, we'll work something out. Someone from church do me a favor and get the link to Jerika Swatek, so I don't get killed :-)

http://houghton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010269&l=e61b6&id=100301115