Sightings of Home
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.” ~C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
In The Last Battle, the final volume of The Chronicles of Narnia, Jewel the unicorn finds the Narnian version of heaven baffling yet familiar. Regardless of the confusing feelings, he knows it’s home and that he must discover more and more of it.
I think we, too, will be surprised by heaven. Most of all, I think we’ll be surprised that we will not “go to heaven” in the end. The Bible never uses that phrase—not once in all its sixty-six books. Instead, both Isaiah and Revelation describe the union of heaven and earth, a new creation where humans will find ultimate joy and God will forever be present. John describes kind of an Eden 2.0—people engaged in their best employment in a perfect new world that restores heaven and earth to their rightful unity.
With respect to the hymn writer, we will not “fly away.”
Even the imagery echoes Eden:
“Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.”(Rev. 22:1-2 NIV)
The abundant flowing water and conspicuously important trees remind us of that place where humans were first offered a tree of life. As we read these words in a time of unrest that hasn’t happened in our generations, don’t these promises sound like a place we’ve been “looking for all {our} lives”?
Do “the nations” frighten you right now? My own nation scares the life out of me, without even mentioning those at war in other parts of the world. A pandemic has retrained our social instincts to make us fear and avoid one another, destroying mental health and the kind of community necessary for human flourishing. Political division has divided families. People look for exits when they do go out, spooked by the specter of gun violence anywhere and everywhere. Whole segments of the population fear the loss of basic human rights—rights people of color maintain they have never had and see slipping farther away. All the while, we’re bracing for weather extremes as we do little to stop the warming of our world. Then, there’s actual war waged against innocent underdogs.
All in all, it seems the nations need some of those leaves from the tree of life, STAT. The patient is in critical condition.
So are a lot of us. I know I yearn for the day I no longer hurt 24/7. One day, I’ll be swing dancing and clambering up waterfalls again, and I won’t need healing trees because my resurrected body will never know pain.
The promise is so much greater than flying away to some cloudy space populated by angels with harps. The Lord has planned a merging of God’s space and ours, perfecting ours beyond our current imagination and inviting us to enjoy it forever as perfected humans.
So what about now? Jesus also promised that the kingdom of God is here and now. In a way, he broke through and began the unification. When Jesus commissioned his followers, he told them they would do even greater things than he had done, to the ends of the earth (John 14:12, Matt. 28:19). Jesus meant that every time one of his people did something as he would do it, they were planting little pockets of the kingdom in this world.
Every time we offer kindness, healing, restoration, justice, comfort, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, or hope, seeds of the kingdom are planted. They’re small places where heaven meets earth. For people who are hopeless or fearful now, these liminal spaces where they can see and feel the presence of God mean more than all the words we can spill.
If we, like Jewel, are longing for our real home, working to bring the kingdom here and now is a good way to at least lay down some carpet and wash the windows of our current home. We’ll never create heaven—humans can never eradicate evil because it’s part of us. We can, though, offer sightings of home to those who need it.
Scripture for Reflection
For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. (Rom. 8:19, 23 NIV)
Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth, and no one will even think about the old ones anymore. Be glad; rejoice forever in my creation! And look! I will create Jerusalem as a place of happiness. Her people will be a source of joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and delight in my people. And the sound of weeping and crying will be heard in it no more. (Isa. 65:17-19 NIV)
Reach for More
Have you ever thought of your interactions with other people as potential spaces where heaven and earth meet? How would that change the way you interact with people? Think of 3-5 concrete things you could do to be that space for someone this week. Then plan how they’ll get done!
is a writer, speaker, pastor, mom of three, and author of five books. She likes to travel, grow flowers, read Tolkien, and research her next project. She believes in Jesus, grace, restoration, kindness, justice, and dark chocolate. Her passion is partnering with the next generation of faith. Jill blogs at jillmrichardson.com.
Photograph © Faye Cornish, used with permission
