Heaven on earth
July 22 2021
Every morning when we are driving, the kids and I say our morning prayer. It is a prayer my mom and dad used to say with me and my four sisters every morning before we would walk to school, and I remember my dad standing in the driveway with the five of us, all dressed in matching uniforms, standing around him and him putting his hands on our head as a fathers blessing, during the prayer.
In the rear view mirror, on this morning, as we were praying, I could see Damon who is three, alternate between squeezing his eyes closed and trying to repeat the unfamiliar words, to “peeking” and watching his sister say the prayer, which she almost knew by heart.
When we finished the prayer, Little five year old Eevie said “I can’t wait to go to heaven so I can see God and Jesus”.
I thought about how children accept God so easily, and try to find a way to “understand” him and communicate about him in their conversations with us. What came to mind was the words of the lords prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven”. So I said to Eevie, “did you know that heaven is right here, right now, and if you want to see it, you can, every day”.
“OOOOOh” she said in frustration, “NO Lis, that is NOT the heaven I am talking about. There are TWO heavens and I am talking about the one where you go when you are dead like ‘Big’, you know, after you pass on?”
“Big” is a shorter version of the name we all call my dad. He was nicknamed “big man” by my son Jonathan, who thought my very tall and athletic dad, was a very “big man”. Eevie could not remember to call him big man, and she just called him “big” but she understood that my mom was his wife, and that he had been in a plane crash.
“Oh OK” I said to her because I did not want her to feel frustrated with me for not understanding her. I was silent for a moment, and then I asked her a question…”Eevie, why do you think God would make heaven such a beautiful place where everyone is happy but then he would not let anyone go there or see him unless they were dead”.
She was quick to answer…”oh Lis, you do not have to worry, when people die, they turn to bones, but THAT is not heaven, don’t worry Lis, you get to save your skin in heaven, you are not bones,” she said…it is the OTHER heaven”.
Her answer, and unintentional “save my own skin” play on words, made me smile…I had been watching a TV series Outlander where Lallybroch (pronounced ‘la la bruk’ because it is in gorgeous Scotland) is perceived as ‘heaven’ by the main characters in the show because that is where they supposedly can save their own skin, and also attain pure bliss and happiness and enjoy the fruits of their labors.
But instead of living there, they end up in “the other heaven” or America…but does that mean America is supposed to be hell, according to the movies, I wondered? Are we as adults, as deluded in our thinking as we suppose our kids to be? I certainly do not see America as hell.
I have not talked to Eevie about hell because I believe in teaching kids about what is good, perfect and pure, the same way my parents taught me. As I said “lala” out loud to myself, I thought of the movie “la la land” which I have not seen but have read the reviews… a movie which seems to cast doubt on the belief that any human being can experience “heaven on earth” because in the movie, we are all destined to make irreparable mistakes. La La Land SEEMS to be a movie, memorializing a cryptic belief that those who believe in heaven or happily every after are believing in fiction.
I wondered for a second, which of us, Eevie or myself, might be in “La La land”…if lala land, or the movies’ name for the place we believed to be heaven, turned out to indeed be fiction, and hell could come knocking at our door, sooner or later, like a sack of skinless bones, ready to give us a reality check?
Gratefully, that thought dissipated almost instantaneously, as the bible, which I read daily, reminds us to “choose life” as our only reality, like Jesus did, which allowed him to rise up when it seemed like he was dead. With the fortification of biblical wisdom sustaining my thought I was able to responded to her comment with my own comment.
“I see what you mean Eevie, about heaven, but I know that God is good, and he loves little children and does not want for it to be hard for them to see God. He wants us all to be able to see him right now so he made everything around us so that we can see RIGHT NOW all the things God made and think about him. When we look at a beautiful tree, or a bird or the sky, we can SEE EVIDENCE of God and be reminded of Him”. “Heaven CAN be right here” I said, if you are looking at the right things.
What I said to the five year old, I realized can apply to every environment we might find ourselves in. Are we trying to change that person we do not know personally, and get them to “take that vaccine” or “worry about the climate” or are we concerned about improving OURSELVES and our own behavior or seeing the good that already exists in ourselves or in those we know PERSONALLY. The screwtape letters warn us about the evils of choosing “far flung benevolence” over doing good within ourselves, or our immediate circle of friends. Appreciating the individual nature of each person, is an acknowledgement of God, because our differences are God created. In work, if it is a struggle, or a difficult environment, what IN that environment can remind us of God, or heaven, because isn’t it right there for us to discover if we are looking for good?
The best and most simple example of that kind of thinking, in my mind happened when Moses took what appeared to be a snake, and instead saw a staff. What appeared to be something that would strike him and hurt him, instead became something that he used to lean upon and to move forward with. His view or perception of it, was what changed.
Moses did not embrace an evil snake in his thinking, instead he only saw a staff, or something useful and harmless. Was it ever a snake? To his ‘human’ thinking perhaps it was, but to his higher spiritual nature, he was able to focus on only good, and that perception of good, transformed his physical environment from one dominated by a snake, to one dominated by good work.
In relationships like marriage, if there are power struggles or trust issues, what in our homes or families can remind us of God, because the good is also there, waiting to be discovered. What we “see” as good, gives us a platform in our thinking to STAND on, and gives us a “happy” environment so that we can experience “heaven on earth”. It is not a self deception, rather it is a self fulfilling demonstration of the importance of making that which is good, the most important reality that we give our attention to.
When we can do that, all that SEEMS negative or destructive or diseased, can fade away or be healed, sometimes instantaneously, like watching a snake turn into a staff. If we are able to do that only part of the time, perhaps we will not see a staff, but will instead see a dead snake. But heaven is not about the “death” of evil, it is about “life”. Looking for good, for some, is a lifetime process, but for others, is an instantaneous demonstration.
It is so interesting and rewarding to have these deep conversations with the innocent perspective of a five year old, to help us gain traction in our pursuit of only good, or heaven on earth.
