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Lonesome for Heaven


Life is about learning, and I love to learn. But I don’t always love life. That’s not to say I’m looking to the grave. No, rather I’m looking at Heaven. Days go by and more people I love now call it home. My paternal grandmother used to say she was lonesome for Heaven – she isn’t anymore. I am though.

Not heaven, but Chris Tomlin did a great jobleading worship at CHIC 2012
Heaven is something I love to think about, yet try to avoid. I could easily, have easily, spent hours daydreaming about what eternity will be like. How it will feel to sing praises to God as He sits on His throne. Imagine what a picnic with Ruth and Esther would be like. Tried to envision my heroes of the faith gathered around a campfire telling stories of how great our God is. Of just watching Jesus interact with the Father. What I picture is to me so filled with beauty there are tears blocking my vision and a cry choking my throat after having taken five seconds to write about them.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”*

Wow. The beauty that brings me to tears is dim compared with the true loveliness of Heaven. My vivid imagination cannot grasp what true beauty is, not where God is housed.

That leaves me with a startling realization. My longing for Heaven, to be so near God, while at its root is a right thing, I often use it wrongly. I was not made to sit on earth dreaming of Heaven. One day I will be able to marvel at my King’s majesty in person, but now, my mission is not to dream of my eternal home. My purpose on earth is single-minded – to bring Glory to my Father.

Sitting, gazing at the sunset imagining His home is not what I ought to be doing. Frankly, it’s a waste of my short time here. God created me to see things in my head, but not to keep them there. I am to bring them to all corners of the world at the very least the corners of my own social sphere.

I can see the splendor to come, but, for now, my focus is to be on the beauty that has been created here. To point with all I do toward the perfect, Scarred King.
*1 Corinthians 13:12 – how the great chapter on love finishes.

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