Looking For Heaven
March 20th, 2007 by Sonja

I’ve recently taken out my Celtic Daily Prayer book … again and begun using it more regularly … again. I love the Celtic way of prayer and life. The way of learning to pray through life and live through prayer. It grounds me in a good way. There was a book mark that I’d left in a funny place, so I opened it to the bookmark and found some readings that struck me:

The only preparation which multitudes seem to make for heaven is for its judgment bar. What will they do in its streets? What have they practised of love? How like are they to its Lord? Earth is the rehearsal for heaven. The eternal beyond is the eternal here. The street-life, the home-life, the business-life, the city-life in all the varied range of its activity, are an apprenticeship for the city of God. There is no other apprenticeship for it.

Traveller to God’s last city, be glad that you are alive. Be thankful for the city at your door and for the chance to build its walls a little nearer heaven before you go. Pray for yet a little while to redeem the wasted years. And week by week as you go forth from worship, and day by day as you awake to face this great and needy world, learn to ‘seek a City’ there, and in the service of its neediest find heaven.

I’ve searched, but cannot find the source, of these readings. So I cannot properly attribute them.  I’m pondering the notions they present about our search for the heavenly.  They seem to be inextricably linked.  Or are they?  Do we practice for heaven in service to the needy?  Who is needy?  I wonder sometimes if providing service to those who are needy in body is a service to those of us who are needy in spirit.  Thus it becomes an apprenticeship for both.


4 Responses  
  • Paul writes:
    March 22nd, 20077:07 amat

    I wonder how often this is because we seperate both heaven/earth – life now, life then. If I look at the creation/recreation story it is one of earth and the heavens created as God’s palace-temple and that we become God idol’s – given life to bare the image of God. What it means to be an image bearer and what it means to inhabit creation where we reflect God and live out the likeness of God I am only just starting to get my head around. But possibly one thing is to forget that since we are created as an image bearer we can bring creative life giving God or we can forget that and exploit each other and our creation – the 2 seem to be linked – when we forget we are an image bearer creation always seems to suffer and injustice becomes rife…

           
  • Doug Jones writes:
    March 22nd, 200710:56 amat

    I like that phrase… the way you say it – “learning to pray through life and live through prayer.” Well the Celtics seemed to see heaven and earth as needfully intertwined (the image of the celtic knot – or so I have heard)… I think that the idea of the Kingdom/Eternal Life/Heaven & Earth are best thought of it that oft stated phrase – both here… but not yet.

           
  • aBhantiarna Solas writes:
    March 22nd, 20073:56 pmat

    Paul … I love the imagery you’ve invoked of being an image-bearer of God and how that plays out in terms of our interaction with creation. It’s really quite beautiful. Thank you.

           
  • aBhantiarna Solas writes:
    March 22nd, 20074:02 pmat

    Doug … and it’s embracing that tension with both hands that is the trick isn’t it? To live somehow with a foot in the here and a foot in the not yet is what we must attempt. That is the apprenticeship in which we train … I think. 😉

           


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