When people think of heaven they think of a place with pristine, sterile semi-angelic beings dressed in mono-colored outfits. Nothing happens off the script; people blandly interact to the point nausea, and life takes on an extremely tranquil aura. Happiness is defined by nothing out of order, you will never see a spills on the floor, and one cannot find anything resembling intense emotion.
I don’t find this heaven anywhere in the Bible. I find a heaven where there was “a Woman dressed all in sunlight, standing on the moon, and crowned with Twelve Stars. She was giving birth to a Child and cried out in the pain of childbirth.” (Revelation 12.1, 2)
This heaven has the sensuality of a woman bathes and dressed in sunlight, standing out in the open f or all to see and observe while she is decked and adorned to the maximum. She also happens to be heavily pregnant and starts the birthing process. Fluids are everywhere! The noise that surrounds every birth is underway. Natural is playing itself out in bright, living, and vibrant color!
This sounds like the best of life today. We have moments of beauty that transcends everything and lifts of hearts and souls beyond and to the heavens. We also have a lot of other stuff – the messy fluids of being alive and the harsh reality of broken relationships.
Heaven is an absence of many things – greed, corruption, and self. Something has to fill that gap and it is a doubling of all that gives us hope. Instead of the junk I see compassion for those in need, love that never ends and also respects, and a shared sense of peace and hope. And in the midst of it all birth and the stuff of life that provides texture and living down to the cellular level.
We can be a part of heaven today. We can revel in the beauty, deal with the stuff of live, and let God push the junk away. We have this option, regardless of yesterday’s junk, today’s fears, and tomorrow’s wanderings.
