I just can’t help myself.
I know, I know: thinking about heaven is a no no in today’s world. We’re all about mindfulness, being in the moment, focusing on the here and now. I mean c’mon: isn’t now all we have, all we are responsible for, and all we need?
So my bad here. It’s just that I find myself, especially as I’m getting older, yearning for something more, something that seems both in and out of my grasp. And this yearning seems more than conjecturing, more than some kind of extended wish fulfillment, something that is simply beyond.
Sorry--sidetracked again. I’m sure it makes sense that focusing on some nebulous afterlife is a form of escapism. Feeling stressed out? Daydream about stresslessness. Existential unhappiness? Think pie in the sky.
But to be honest, my thoughts about heaven don’t always gravitate to the grooviness. Sometimes eternal bliss just sounds a little boring. We’re talking forever here, and a gazillion times a gazillion years is a long time to hang out. What are we going to do: sit around singing hymns all day?
But there’s a part of me that really believes God knows how to party. Maybe we’ll do extensive traveling around the extensive universe. Or maybe we’ll consider the universe in a drop of water, if there is any. Maybe we’ll get insight into why God used Tammy Faye Baker to spread His Gospel for so many years. Or most incredibly, why He’s used me.
There I go again! What a digressor! And the reality is you’re preaching to the choir to us Christians on the living for now deal--the Bible pretty much commands it, for God’s sake. We’re familiar with the Old Testament story of manna only for the day and the New Testament daily emphasis for “tomorrow has enough troubles of its own.” We’re taught that the past is forgiven, the future is in God’s hands, and that the present is where we should set our attention.
So don’t worry--I’m a believer. It’s just that at times my head along with my heart gets in the way. Part of it is a do the math deal: if indeed there is even a possibility we are going to live for eternity (the aforementioned gazillion x a gazillion years), then putting all our eggs into this timespan on earth basket seems a wee bit.......short-sighted.
But when I’m distracted like this, I think of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who in his book Finding Flow proves that he’s more than just a guy with the world record for most syllables and consonants in a name. He takes Pascal’s Wager on the existence of God and heaven (“if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”) and turns it on its head, saying “when in doubt, the best strategy is to assume that these seventy or so years are our only chance to experience the cosmos, and we should make the fullest of it.”
He’s our guy. But just when I’m ready for full conversion, a few pesky “what if’s” crop up for me. Sure being “in the moment” is great, but what if what we need more is perspective, something bigger than ourselves and our world at any given time or time period? Certainly people can be lost in the moment along with found, be a slave to the moment along with feeling freedom.
And then there’s the biggest “what if,” as in what if we as people weren’t made for now and wondering about heaven but made for heaven and wondering about now? What if this moment and this period and this life were just a season of sojourning? Could it be going to heaven isn’t leaving home but going home?
Whoa--at it again. Maybe all my digressions are telling me to embrace my agnowsticism. Not that I don’t think now is important, but I just get the sense that the ultimate mindfulness is thinking about (and yearning for) heaven.
I know, I know: thinking about heaven is a no no in today’s world. We’re all about mindfulness, being in the moment, focusing on the here and now. I mean c’mon: isn’t now all we have, all we are responsible for, and all we need?
So my bad here. It’s just that I find myself, especially as I’m getting older, yearning for something more, something that seems both in and out of my grasp. And this yearning seems more than conjecturing, more than some kind of extended wish fulfillment, something that is simply beyond.
Sorry--sidetracked again. I’m sure it makes sense that focusing on some nebulous afterlife is a form of escapism. Feeling stressed out? Daydream about stresslessness. Existential unhappiness? Think pie in the sky.
But to be honest, my thoughts about heaven don’t always gravitate to the grooviness. Sometimes eternal bliss just sounds a little boring. We’re talking forever here, and a gazillion times a gazillion years is a long time to hang out. What are we going to do: sit around singing hymns all day?
But there’s a part of me that really believes God knows how to party. Maybe we’ll do extensive traveling around the extensive universe. Or maybe we’ll consider the universe in a drop of water, if there is any. Maybe we’ll get insight into why God used Tammy Faye Baker to spread His Gospel for so many years. Or most incredibly, why He’s used me.
There I go again! What a digressor! And the reality is you’re preaching to the choir to us Christians on the living for now deal--the Bible pretty much commands it, for God’s sake. We’re familiar with the Old Testament story of manna only for the day and the New Testament daily emphasis for “tomorrow has enough troubles of its own.” We’re taught that the past is forgiven, the future is in God’s hands, and that the present is where we should set our attention.
So don’t worry--I’m a believer. It’s just that at times my head along with my heart gets in the way. Part of it is a do the math deal: if indeed there is even a possibility we are going to live for eternity (the aforementioned gazillion x a gazillion years), then putting all our eggs into this timespan on earth basket seems a wee bit.......short-sighted.
But when I’m distracted like this, I think of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who in his book Finding Flow proves that he’s more than just a guy with the world record for most syllables and consonants in a name. He takes Pascal’s Wager on the existence of God and heaven (“if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”) and turns it on its head, saying “when in doubt, the best strategy is to assume that these seventy or so years are our only chance to experience the cosmos, and we should make the fullest of it.”
He’s our guy. But just when I’m ready for full conversion, a few pesky “what if’s” crop up for me. Sure being “in the moment” is great, but what if what we need more is perspective, something bigger than ourselves and our world at any given time or time period? Certainly people can be lost in the moment along with found, be a slave to the moment along with feeling freedom.
And then there’s the biggest “what if,” as in what if we as people weren’t made for now and wondering about heaven but made for heaven and wondering about now? What if this moment and this period and this life were just a season of sojourning? Could it be going to heaven isn’t leaving home but going home?
Whoa--at it again. Maybe all my digressions are telling me to embrace my agnowsticism. Not that I don’t think now is important, but I just get the sense that the ultimate mindfulness is thinking about (and yearning for) heaven.
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