Heaven will look like earth, just a perfect one

            Those who say this life is only for getting to the next one do not understand the Great Story.

            The earth was God's gift.

            Heaven may be streets of gold. I hope not.

            But in this Great Story, we are first given the details of God’s artistic expression and delight in his earth. If God had wanted streets of gold he would have created them. But he did not.

 

           He created the rocky cliffs, the undaunted oceans, the wise deserts, blooming flowers, summer and winter, spring and fall. That makes my soul leap in praise. I have a funny feeling that heaven, the new heaven, will resemble a new earth; and that our lives there will resemble our most happy moments here—hanging Christmas lights, taking walks, eating and drinking with family, reading on Sunday afternoons—but in a perfect way, a way we have never known. We will be with our God like never before. Therefore we will experience each other and live on the new earth as God does—perfectly. That is just a funny feeling. But I would not be surprised.

            My family and I were in Ireland once and while driving through the mountainous Dingle peninsula, we stopped on a dangerously tight road. My brother and I began to scale the mountainside. Irish terrain is this spongy and luscious earth. Tufts of emerald green grass protrude from bulbous and richly dark soil. Rocks intersperse the countryside and are buried by the green landscape. Your feet sink a centimeter or two as you walk upon the giving land. In minutes we were two to three hundred feet in the air, without realizing we had scaled that high.

 

            We kept climbing. Why?

            Because mountains are meant to be climbed.

 

            There is something pure and exhilarating in the ascent. There is something primal in your soul that stretches out as you summit unknown peaks. Higher and higher we climbed, as far as the mountain would allow. Until, unbeknownst to us, we stepped off a steep incline and onto a plateau.

 

And that is when we saw it...

            Behind us, where we had just climbed from, was a precipitous drop, the distant road and behind that even more mountains in the vast horizon. In front of us, though, sat a tranquil and steady lake. The waters were a blue and gray mixture but lucid, oh so clear.

 

           I could see the brown sediment on the bottom of the lake, sparkles of rocks shining up. This was Ireland so it was cold and windy. A light mist perpetually fell and the wind whipped the top layer of water, folding it over itself. Ripples like advancing platoons crashed against each other as pin pricks of rain struck its surface. But the bottom of the lake, the core, was unmoved.

 

          I wondered how long it had sat up there, surrounded by emerald earth, undisturbed and existing in its sheer, dreamless beauty. Behind the lake was the rest of the mountain. And from the road down below you never would have guessed that the mountain took a breath and plateaued to allow this scene of perfection. As the rich green mountain continued upward behind the lake, sheep grazed its side. They leaped and played together. Some stood still. Others just ate the grass…It was a sight that I shall never forget.

            It was beauty the type of which I had never seen. Silence enveloped us as my brother and I drank in this gift. I stood there and wept with strongly fixed eyes. I looked at the undisturbed lake seated on top of a mountain rippling in the cold mist and I praised my Father. The sheep played on the backdrop of the green and spongy earth, jumping from rock to rock and I knew my Father was watching. I knew he saw each sheep. And I knew he saw us. I knew it without a single speck of doubt. There was no moment where I heard God speak. No, this was his word of hope to us.

 

Silence and the beauty of his creation was the voice of God this day.

 

          We simply knew that he was alert and alive and working. He was working even at the top of a remote mountain which not many people would ever take notice of. But he is the infinite God; and so he works even there. And in this moment, this picture of life was his gift to us…his still, dearly beloved children.

            We could not turn away. But we did because we had to. And as I walked down back to the road, I knew that heaven, whatever it might look like, will be filled with eternal sights such as this. Whatever else it may be, heaven will be a paradise.

 

I knew intuitively and unshakably, as I descended in mud and tickling grass,

exactly what God my Father must have felt

when he looked out upon his newly created earth,

smiling,

and called it good.

Swim through dawn’s majestic birth

Proceed in mirth spread through for all
Troubles haunt no man, once more a virgin
Listening to creation’s newfound laugh
 
Tread soft ‘pon leaves like lily pads green
Floating ripples on ponds where life flows unseen
Yet seen in laurel-hued tranquility
And tears the raindrops flow true

This place so pure to dwell in its arms

We dance, trees’ trunks shade us from storms
Light sparkles and curves as the waters like charms
And my breaths tickle so sweet
Here, in peace do we sleep
Safe ever does he keep

Us perfect, laying at his feet