Thursday, July 16, 2015

Moments of heaven

While everyone else is living in the business of everyday normal life of happiness, excitement, laughter, triumph, success, health, relaxation, courage, and comfort, as well as sadness, depression, crying, defeat, failure, sickness, stress, fear, and pain, we step sometimes into unexpected moments of joy that blur and shadow everything else. Theses moments, detached from time and space, trump the pleasures and sorrows of life and render them all insignificant. They are experienced by everyone, although some more than others. Those who cannot process them, move on and delete them from their memories. Others cherish them as transcendental experiences beyond this world and try in vain to re-live them. As we travel fast in the realm of life these experiences jolt us into "moments of heaven."

An example would be a ten year old boy playing a game on the street with the girl that he loves, and all the other kids are playing around them and with them. A jolt of courage leads them both to confess their first love to each other. The world disappears around them, and they enter into a state of being never experienced before and which will never be experienced again.

A second example is kids playing while grown ups are engaged in conversations about the day. But when a person steps away for a short break, he hears a melody that captures his soul and paralyzes him, making him careless of everything and everyone else around him, while letting the melody fill his spirit like wine pouring into a glass. A third example would be waking up from a dream realizing an encounter with the living God that renders one humble to the core. All these are "moments of heaven."

We do not respond affirmatively to God's call in order to attain heaven. We do it because of love. We love God and what God is about. Yet  these experiences give us windows into heaven. They for a brief moment remind us that what matters most is beyond our control. They show us briefly that the lures of life are nothing compared to what God has prepared for us. While worldly powers drag us toward experiences of emptiness, these moments assure us that life has its wonderful secrets that await us. God wants us to freely choose Him so that we can live life abundantly toward infinite moments of heaven.

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