“There is a Heavenly City…”
We took a trip to Oregon last week and it was MAGICAL and BEAUTIFUL. I felt like I was stepping into Narnia or the Wildwood Chronicles; my imagination just came alive surrounded by emerald trees covered in moss, shimmering snow covered mountains, tumbling crystal clear waterfalls. I’ve always loved stories set in places like this, so it was awe-inspiring to step into a real-life version of the places so many of my childhood dreams were focused on.
When I was a kid I wrote stories like that. My stories took place in dream worlds with fantastical plots and characters so real to me I considered them friends. They were important to me, to my identity and how I saw myself in the world. Like Hamilton, I “wrote my way out” of my ordinary daily existence. I wrote my way out of my limited perspective, out of a self-focus, out of my everyday… and into the extraordinary.
I think that’s why fantasy still resonates with me so deeply – I love the dream of it, of what the world COULD be. What I wish it would be. Who I imagine I could be. It’s aspirational and inspirational and opens my mind to possibilities the natural world doesn’t always offer.
All the stories I read and wrote then resonate with me even more now because I know they come from a longing in my soul for the Kingdom of God. A world that is not yet but is coming.
For something different and new and beyond what I could dream up myself. A place where things are different. Where things are how they are SUPPOSED to be. Where everything comes out right in the end. Where people are who they were meant to be. Where everything is fully GOOD.
The Kingdom of God is a glimmer, just under the surface, sometimes pushing through in our world and lives in surprising ways. But of course it is not yet fully realized. There is still so much NOT good - so much hurt, lack, confusion, injustice, conflict. We live with a keen awareness that the world is not what it should be. Living in the waiting for all of this to be made right and whole can be painful.
I am thankful that Jesus himself recognized this tension when he introduced the prayer, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”.
The glimpses of the goodness and Kingdom of God that I do experience remind me to pray and to work with God to grow that Kingdom right where I am. Someday that Kingdom will come and we won’t have to wait or hope for it because it will be HERE. But in the meantime, I am thankful for stories and beautiful places and things and people that remind me that Heavenly City IS coming.
“There is a heavenly city
That I’m compelled to find
Though I love the flowers and trees
And the smell of the grinding sea
And all the beautiful things here in life
I, I’m a pilgrim here
On this side of the great divide
I’m a pilgrim here
But I’ll walk with you for a while”
