Yearning

Someone told me what heaven was once... as if they'd been there. He explained that heaven was me and you and every other believer standing around the throne, praising and worshipping God Almighty, forever and ever, one in purpose, along with the angels and the saints and the elders.

I was most definitely not displeased by this picture. But it didn't quite seem to be enough for me, nor did it exhilarate my heart the way I thought it should have.

Throughout my life I have seen beautiful things, like sunsets or beaches or mountains or clouds, and felt strangely unable to look at them for too long. A moment or two, perhaps, but before long there came a dreadful ache inside, like a rock in my stomach, until I was forced to look, walk, or run away. Why did I turn my back?

It is only in the last two years that I have realized the reason.

I cannot look at the billowing plumes of summer clouds, the fiery reds and oranges of October trees, or the glorious, exploding light and color of a sunset for very long without desiring to hurtle myself into them headfirst...to really experience them in a way I cannot. My eyes can only take them in, my fingers touch them, perhaps. But I cannot truly know them...I cannot be 'in' them.

Haven't you ever stood, perhaps, in a meadow in the gloaming, watching the tips of the grass grow golden and translucent in the waning summer light? Have you gazed in wonder and fear at the endless sea, forever pounding upon the sands of the kingdoms of earth, with a power no man can tame or harness for himself? Have you been kissed by chilled autumn air, smelled smoke in the breeze, and seen the leaves wafting to the ground in a harvest dance? And what of snow, with the deep, mystical blanket of silence that it casts over woods and cities and towns, turning them into wonderlands while we sleep?

I can see them. I can touch them. I can feel, taste, hear, and smell them, but I cannot truly know them. I cannot be 'in' them. And that is what breaks my heart...it is what forces me to turn away in tears from sunrises and oceans and snowfalls and canyons. I cannot dive down Victoria falls, or soar through the great open skies of the desert. I cannot swim to the depths of the ocean or dance on the rainbow. I cannot race the cheetah or hold hummingbirds or swim with whales. (And I cannot ride a horse, because I am deathly allergic, but that's me. :) Just thought I'd throw it in) All these things I cannot do, and oh, how desperately I want to. It's as if creation is spread out before me, a sensual panoply of glory, and I can only wade in up to my ankles...to my knees, if I work hard. It is simultaneously exhilarating and torturous to see these things...they are gifts, to be sure, but gifts I cannot fully enjoy in my humanity.

It wouldn't matter, if the beauty we see so richly painted around us were merely creation, merely afterthought, merely art. No, I say. It is a glimpse...a peek into the porthole of heaven. It's one tiny fragment of God's beautiful, glorious, infinite, eternal heart, and the reason it hurts to look is because we cannot fully know it, cannot fully be 'in' it, as long as we remain here.

And so, when I get to heaven, the first thing I want to do is look into the eyes of Christ... I mean, really look into them. I want to grasp His face in both my hands and just stare, deeper and deeper, until I am so full of His gaze that I cannot hold any more of it. And then, hopefully, He will hold my hand, and come with me to the farthest reaches of beauty. I want to walk the stone floors of Lothlorien with Him, and wet our feet in the brooks of the Shire. I want to have a pint with Him in an old country pub, and then travel the moors of Erin, until we reach the sea. I want to dive right into the ocean...right in...and ride a whale or a dolphin or a giant stingray. I want to run my hands along the reefs of the Caribbean and dance in the spray of the rapids. I want to run along the light as it travels from the sun, and float in the cosmos amid meteors and planets and moons and giant burning stars.

And, oh, how much I want to lie with Him in fields of gold...the ones that Sting sings about. I want Him to show me everything...everything.

I want to meet Lewis and Chesterton and Augustine and Francis... I want to sit with them for hours and talk about the Lord and about how good He is. I want to meet Pope John Paul the II, and see his kind face, his caring hands, his humble manner for myself. I especially want to meet Rich Mullins. I want to tell him that he has impacted me more than most people I've met.

I want to know God, forever and ever and ever. And in the knowing of Him, I want to know His beauty. I want to dive into it, drink it, and decorate myself with it. What I want most of all, more than anything, is just Him. I want Christ, and I want Him all over me.

I am longing for heaven; yearning for home.