Tag Archives: heaven/eternity

Heaven’s Not a Party Town?

Commentary

On my walk yesterday, I finished listening to Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. It got me thinking about how God views the little triumphs so far and few between in His fallen world.

Why does this matter to me? There are two reasons. First, it matters because considering it is what I should do. Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son prompts us to compare ourselves not only with a prodigal or a resentful older brother, but also with a compassionate, generous, and joyful father. Nouwen spends the last third of his book driving that last point home.

A second reason why this matters is that it relates to my current state of mind. I wrote about this already in my commentary for “Beauty’s Time Tabled.” In the arc of my reflection on how evil has been manifest in my own life, the life of the Church, and the life of my nation, I have come to a significant point. Having fancied for some time that my thinking and my poetry might yield fruit beyond my own life, I have begun to dial down my hopes and expectations. The best I can realistically hope for is limited and isolated triumphs. That’s reality in a fallen world.

So how should I respond to this disillusionment? Does God’s joyful response to limited triumphs serve as a model for me?

Heaven is a Party Town

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of three parables that Luke puts together (in Luke 15): The Lost Sheep, The Lost Coin, and The Prodigal Son. A common element in the three parables is the joyful celebration. The shepherd, having brought home his one errant sheep “calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!'” (Luke 15:6). Jesus, who knows well how Heaven is run continues,

I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Luke 15: 7

When the woman finds her one lost coin, she likewise calls together friends for a party. And again, Jesus compares her response to the joyful response in Heaven:

I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Luke 15:10

Then we get to the much longer Parable of the Prodigal Son. By now, we know to equate the earthly father’s response to God’s:

But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.

Luke 15:32

If God and His angels celebrate small triumphs, can I? Will I? Or does everything have to work out just as I wish in order for me to be happy? Would I be a party pooper in Heaven?

The poem mocks my own severe view of things. Luke was severe. He clearly had high standards for our response to God. But he was careful to record what Jesus said about Heaven’s response to small triumphs: it’s a party town, where music and dancing can clearly be heard even by a resentful older brother standing outside.

Beauty’s Time Tabled

Commentary

Recently, I have written some light and playful poems. So where does this one come from?!

It seems that I have come to the end of a hopeful period. What I have been investigating–in personal, church, and world history–has been dark. It has left me sad, but sad in a hopeful way. I thought that by identifying the source and nature of various evils, I could somehow propose reformation.

I thought that I, through poetic thought and expression, could be a channel of God’s reforming beauty. Maybe I’ll regain that perspective tomorrow. But today, it feels like beauty has been put on hold; it has been tabled for now.

Is this depression talking? I doubt it. It’s probably just reality setting in. Beauty will have its time. But now–at least today–belongs to lament.

ADDENDUM: On my long walk today, I finished listening to a book my counselor assigned: Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. The final chapter of that book encourages the reader to consider how he or she might become more like the Father in Jesus’ parable. Well…. In considering that, one thing stands out to me tonight: God the Father takes joy in isolated victories. If He can, is there any reason I cannot as well?

Running Out With Time

Commentary

This is a poem I started writing yesterday and finished up this morning. Yesterday, I thought of the phrase, “running out WITH time,” and asked myself how that might upend the notion of “running out OF time.” So, I didn’t know where I was going to go with the poem, but started writing anyway.

In a friend’s Sunday School class several few years ago, the friend asked us all if we thought there would be no time in Heaven. It seemed that my friend and I were the only ones willing to assert, “I don’t know of any reason why time should NOT continue to exist!” It surprised me that we were in the minority on this one.

Where do people get the notion that time will cease to exist in the eternal state? I suspect one source is a spillover of neoplatonism. But take this with a huge grain of salt. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, “I served with a philosopher. I knew a philosopher. A philosopher was a friend of mine. I am no Philosopher.” Regardless, the theory is that people with this thinking lump time in with matter, and therefore consider it unworthy of their ideal, immaterial “Heaven” (a disgusting non-place, if you ask me–I’m looking for the restoration of God’s GOOD creation).

Another possible source is an old translation of Revelation 10:6

And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

Revelation 10:6 KJV

Most modern translations render that along the lines, “that there should be no more delay.”

I ran my poem by a philosopher/theologian this morning, and he assured me that whatever reasons people come up with for saying that there will be no more time in Eternity are a matter of “blindly swallowing [wrong notions of secondary issues] without theological reflection.” Whew (it could have been me)!

Back To The Poem: Time Our Fellow Inmate
Here’s how I got around to using my upended phrase…. It occurred to me that people may think of time as one of life’s evils… that it limits us, perhaps even imprisons us. If so, the answer is to think of time not as the prison, but as a fellow inmate! Someday the prison of current limitations will be torn down. Then we’ll escape our prison cells and joyously run out WITH our fellow inmate, time.

To be continued….

Rain Denying Reign

Commentary

I wrote this out of intense frustration. Recently, I’ve seen a silencing or muting of pointers to God’s amazing goodness and grace. It’s not prudent for me to go into details, to trot out examples. But I could.

On Mountain Tops
It’s probably no accident that my imagery is reminiscent of the giving of the Law (Exodus 19-20), and Israel’s response. To be honest, I haven’t worked out what this poem has to do with that historical event, but I sense that they are related. [NB: for “beauty” in the Law, see this article].

Subjects of His Ugliness
That may be a little harsh. “His Ugliness” refers to Satan (conversely, “Beauty” refers to Jesus). Am I suggesting that some who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ are actually subjects of Satan? Not necessarily, although it is possible. Even genuine followers of Jesus do sometimes wander off the path. In Matthew’s account, shortly after Peter had acknowledged that Jesus is the Messiah (Matthew 16:16), Jesus had to rebuke him:

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Matthew 16:23

The Ambiguous Title
I’m not really enthusiastic about the title. Maybe I’ll come up with something better. For what it’s worth, “Denying” is ambiguous. It can refer to being intellectually opposed to a proposition, and it can refer to successfully thwarting something. With respect to Jesus’ present reign, both senses of denial are currently in operation to one extent or another. But His coming reign cannot be stopped; it will not be denied! Every knee will bow (Rom. 14:11).

[The background photo of Kirkjufell in Iceland is by Hans Braxmeier on Pixabay (I moved the fire)].

Thinking to Yield?

Commentary

Let me try to recap this in one sentence: Instrospection and merely thinking about doing right don’t bring about the purpose for which God created us.

“Lifeless Field” and “baser part”
Prisoners on death row are sometimes spoken of as “dead men walking.” They’re still alive, but they’re headed for death. Because of our belief in Resurrection of the body and of “progressive sanctification,” we Christians could refer to ourselves as “resurrected men walking.” Jesus isn’t through removing deadwood, cultivating the otherwise sterile soil of our hearts just yet. For now, we’re still partly dead, but we’re headed for thorough life, especially when we experience the Resurrection that Jesus experienced after His crucifixion.

Counseling
These days, I’m working with a counselor to help me understand why I have been an irritable man most of my adult life. The work I’m doing now could be compared to using a spade to turn over the dead parts of my life: my disordered affections and stupid coping mechanisms. The aim is to replace irritability with joy and equanimity.

But if I were of the opinion that merely THINKING about what needs to change, or “getting my head on straight” would effect the desired change (“the fruit”), I’d be mistaken. Only God can breathe life into dust and bring it to life.

My counselor has twice suggested something that would really turn away a person who doesn’t believe in God’s active work in our lives. He has said that God seems to have arranged human relationships in such a way that all our attempts at peace and reconciliation lead us to the realization that OUR ATTEMPTS won’t work. We need God. We need the Holy Spirit. We need His intervention and His life-giving work in our lives. At least that’s how I’m understanding the counselor at this point. In one sense, I’m paying the counselor to help me understand that counseling alone is worthless.

“Fig tree leaf so very large”
I’m an elder in my church. It’s a position of esteem and responsibility. It suggests that I am spiritually mature. If I were compared to a tree, one might say that I SEEM to be healthy. But appearance isn’t everything. Who am I really blessing? Who do I comfort? Who do I inspire? Who do I correct? What do people learn about Jesus by looking at my behavior? Just yesterday, I asked one of our deacons to pray for me: “Pray that I’ll actually spend time with people.” No amount of merely thinking right and diligence in administrative work will achieve what God intends for me to achieve: the fruit of being/looking more like Jesus and helping others to do the same.

And then, of course, there’s my family… my wife and boys. Am I blessing them? Or do the dead parts of me — my baser parts — just bring misery to them? Thankfully, they’re walking together with me in this journey.

(background image by Schwoaze on Pixabay)

Voice Lessons

This poem comes out of struggling with what constitutes love for the Creator. Is it only fixation on signs of his return? Will we even recognize his voice then if we cannot recognize it now?

[NOTE: the following may be gobbledygook. Perhaps I’ll wake up early tomorrow morning and do major edits to the post, or even take it offline. That occasionally happens. Let’s just say for now that I’m “thinking out loud.” I’m trying to put words to something I sense more than understand]

Not Just an Expression

Nature expresses the majesty of the Creator. King David spoke of that in Psalm 19:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky displays his handiwork.
2 Day after day it speaks out;
night after night it reveals his greatness.
3 There is no actual speech or word,
nor is its voice literally heard.
4 Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth;
its words carry to the distant horizon.

Creation and the Creator are not the same thing. That would be pantheism. HOWEVER, let me suggest that creation bears the same relationship to God as the soundwaves of speech bear to the speaker: they are his expression. When a child hears her father say, “I love you,” she doesn’t look around and say, “How curious… sound waves emanated from somewhere and landed in my ears.” If she separates the sound waves from the speaker at all, it’s only to say, “Those sound waves tell me that Daddy loves me.”

Nature expresses the majesty of our loving Father. Perhaps it would be better to say that in creating the universe, our Father spoke to us, He expressed his glory (intelligence, kindness, power, beauty, love), and creation is the “sound waves” of His voice.

Are we impressed by what He has expressed? That’s not an idle question.

“They’re Just Flowers”

Long ago and far away, I accompanied two friends on a long hike. Our path entered and followed an arroyo. At one place the walls of the arroyo were covered with tropical flowers. “How beautiful!” said one friend. I agreed. “They’re just flowers!” said the other friend. To this day, I think of that second friend’s response with pain and sadness. God’s beauty was there speaking to us in those flowers, expressing His powerful love. But the second friend was not impressed. He seemed to make no connection between creation and the Creator, between the expression — the “words” — and the Speaker. For him, it seems, Daddy wasn’t saying “I love you.” It was just flowers, random sound waves from who knows where.

RELATED POST: The Day Trees Became Weeds.

Lord’s Day Vision

As I catch up with posting my poems on this blog, here’s one that I am especially eager to get “out there.” It was written on the day that my dear friend announced that he was resigning as our senior pastor. I had known for a couple of days that this was coming. I knew it was going to be painful. I knew that my friend would have other duties on that Sunday. It was Mother’s Day. This day was not all about him. In his typical humble fashion, he carried off his duties for the morning with graciousness. Then, at the end of the service, after he had concluded by announcing his resignation, I and the other elders stood with him and his wife on the stage and prayed for them. The tears came at last — I was close enough to see. And since I know what lead up to this resignation, it was especially painful for me. Here and there, my friend made strategic errors as a senior pastor. WHO DOESN’T?! But any such errors were dwarfed by his faithfulness to God, by all he had put in motion to make our church a place where shepherding and spiritual growth really happen. Let’s just say that two years of extremely painful personal circumstances were exacerbated by the pandemic and a handful of implacable opponents who made my friend their lightning rod.

My pastor’s benediction that day was the old Anglican “Go into the world in peace….” That afternoon, I took a long walk. This poem came to mind as I walked. Here’s how I introduced it on Facebook:

This poem was the fruit of a tearful Sunday walk. It refers to real friends and real expectations. We live now in a long, painful beginning. Someday, that beginning will have reached its end, in terms of time and purpose. For now, “Go into the world in peace; have courage; hold on to what is good.”

Hope
Do you see the hope? It’s real. There’s something about selflessness that reminds me: Jesus triumphed over the grave. When a brother acts like Jesus, I’m reminded of what Jesus’ actions have put in motion. “Have courage. Hold on to what is good.”

Tell Me Again…

I continue to be amazed by seeds. On my walk today, I saw these rubbery seed pods I had never noticed, or felt before, and then realized they are the seed of grape hyacinths, that were in full bloom a few weeks ago. More importantly, there’s something I’m trying to come to terms with: in this fallen world, not all that I think of as loss really IS loss. [I’m getting around to posting this two months after writing that last sentence. It’s a sentence that I’ll have to come back to many a time, to see how much better I understand the nascent thought]

Related Poem: False Flourishing

Unfinished Work

I HAVE NOTICED THAT…
In Spring, artists are drawn to Creation.

Commentary

Back when I posted this on Facebook, I wrote, “Please subscribe to my blog, where I give the background of my simple poems like this one, and the more complex ones, the ones even I barely understand!”

“Simple poems like this one,” eh? So it’s over two months later, and I’m getting around to posting this on my blog. How simple was it? Do I remember what I was saying? Well, kinda….

I encountered this artist on Flagpole Hill, and asked her about her technique. Interestingly, she had a lot of dark areas on the canvas, areas whose eventual subject I could SEE, by looking where she was looking: the bright green grass, the shimmering green leaves. These, she began as dark blobs, explaining “I find it easier to start with the darkness as a base, and then apply the lighter colors.”

My poetic response is a reflection on how eternal life has barely begun (“canvas barely stretched”). We don’t understand yet how God will work beauty out of the painful and ugly experiences we now encounter. But we have hope, because we know Him to be a skillful artist.

A Skillful Artist
I went home and looked up this artist (she sells in galleries). I like her finished work. What I saw that afternoon on Flagpole Hill was not a finished work. It is fair to say that if this is all I had seen, I might feel foolish admiring her “technique,” such as it is, in this unfinished work.

Matters More and Less

Commentary

BACKGROUND
Recently, I have been trying to imagine what it might look like to be in a church that welcomes people from all kinds of backgrounds. Would I be willing to give up my comfort for their sake? What if they’re REALLY different? What if their politics are different than mine, different than the politics of most others in the church? Would we be able to keep things in perspective, or would we chase them off because their politics make them feel like pariahs?

Which is more valuable: a soul, or my opinion?

I was once part of a church plant where my chief motivation was comfort: I wanted to be comfortable with the style of worship, and the kind of people I’d be worshipping with. Now, I recognize comfort as an idol. Doubtless, I retain — and am even now creating — other idols, things that are more important than God’s glory. May He have mercy on me.

SEE THE DARK IRONY?
I’m not smart enough to have intended the searing irony in the next-to-last line. “Like hell” was drawn lightly from recent events. But there is a reality darker than current darkness, infinitely more consequential than current comfort.

THE PHOTOGRAPH
The background photo is of St. John’s Episcopal Church, which I pass by on my walks from home to Flag Pole Hill. One evening, the clouds were threatening. I confess: “HDR Scape” in Snapseed accentuated the drama. Do I feel bad about editing a photo? Not in the least…. It’s part of artistic expression. I’m not a mimeograph!

Poet’s Daydream

Here’s What I Wrote About This

DON’T HATE ME FOR THIS
Almost every day, I take an afternoon nap while listening to music. I try hard then to let my imagination wander free. Often, I think of other artists, and the grasp they have of beauty. I, too, have known beauty. Someday, all of us who know the Author of beauty will have unbridled joy in His creation. Nap time is a good time to savor that hope. In Him, we rest.

The Most Important War

Commentary

Depressed tonight, I recognize a silent battle — THE silent battle — that rages in me and friends. We occupy ourselves with any conflict at hand rather than the conflict at heart. We are intended by God’s merciful will to be fully won over in the battle to be reconciled, to be transformed into children worthy of fellowship with our Elder brother, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the Victor. He won over sin that enslaves, weakens, and demoralizes us. He knows how we began; He also knows how we’ll end. Getting us there is His kind purpose (the Victor’s end).

So, why am I depressed? Largely because I see a problem in truly dear friends, a problem that probably afflicts me as well. They are — perhaps I am as well — occupied with silly, worthless conflicts. They are living in echo chambers that reinforce their perception that what they occupy themselves with is important. I sometimes despair of getting through to them. I don’t want to argue with them. They sometimes “like” what I write, apparently not realizing that it is completely antithetical to the trivial pursuits, the phony wars that call them forth. Some undoubtedly see me in the same sad light.

I wrote on Facebook that we need to pray for one another. God alone is able to rescue us from meaningless, hollow lives. He alone can replace depression with love, hope, and commitment.

In Time Out of Mind

Commentary

A friend asked me if there should be a comma after time. Here’s what I told him:

The absence of a comma opens this up to at least three interpretations. I know this style’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Are you familiar with ee cummings’ “my father moved through dooms of love“? That poem brings me to tears whenever I read it.

The slight effort of getting past the absence of punctuation in cummings may add to its emotional impact. Speaking of tea…. Coffee is better than tea precisely for its body, that it slides down not so easily.

So, here are some pointers to meaning:

  • “In time” can mean “eventually”
  • “Time out of mind” is unimaginably long, think Eternity.
  • In a polarized world, it is always “us” versus “they” (deeper in grammar, “us” receives the malevolence that “they” inflict — objective vs subjective). I like to think of a time when there is such peace between a broad diversity of people, that all of us are “WE,” and we never even think of “THEM.”
  • Currently, things are not as they should be. Even at home, we know we are not where we wish to be. A time is coming when we’ll be where we long to be. Then and there, we’ll be at ease. Then and there we’ll be content with here and now.
  • Where will we be? In the presence of the One who is making all things new, the One who will satisfy our hopes and dreams. Now, He often seems distant. We refer to Him in second person, as “He.” Then we’ll address Him face-to-face as “You.”

Nearer, My God, To Thee

Commentary

I dedicated this little poem to my friends of color, by whose grace, wisdom, and other beauties I hope to better appreciate our Heavenly Father. It’s a slow process. Foolishness is bound up in this heart of mine.

The background image is a stylized photo that I took from my office window. There are times of day when several birds come to my garden. I haven’t figured out why the various species pick the same time, but they do. Almost always, the titmouse and chickadee couples come at the same time. And when they come, they are often joined by a cardinal couple. Is there a certain light or temperature that is just right? I don’t know. Thus the question: “What is that secret chime?”

I titled this “Nearer, My God, to Thee” because the pleasure that I take in the variety of birds who congregate in my little garden must be akin to the pleasure God takes when people of every nation peacefully enjoy the world he created.

Dawn of Eternity

Commentary

Last Fall was a revelation. I thought, like a friend had said, that I had “…about covered it all.” I had been taking photographs of wild flowers around the lake for several months. Now, everything was beginning to die, to dry up and shrivel. What was left to photograph? Then I looked deeper. I decided to focus on what was becoming of the flowers I had photographed. That’s when I came to the realization voiced in the poem above.

Yesterday, I observed a photo someone recently posted for their parent, and a subsequent video. The aging that happened between the photo and the video was marked. Then I looked in the mirror, and the opening lines of this poem popped into my mind!

Grief Will Always Out

This scene, and the words I attached to it, is extremely moving to me. I guess that by my age, there is a lifetime of grief that will not go away in the short term. As a friend wrote, there are “So many missing springs.” Indeed. I can never see the daffodils, wild violets, and other spring flowers without thinking of my Mom. Ever since 2006, they have bloomed without her.

The scene is what I saw when I crossed the bridge where Rush Creek enters White Rock Lake. A few weeks before, I had taken the following photo, which I then captioned “Grow Old Along With Me” (an allusion to Dad’s favorite poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning:

The Last Line

Most biographies end badly. It didn’t help that I was already unaccountably sad* yesterday as I listened to the final chapters of Alister McGrath’s biography “C.S. Lewis – A Life.” Lewis had beautiful things to say about the resurrection. But they were barely acknowledged or reflected in his final days, at least as recorded by McGrath.

To be fair, I was LISTENING to the Audible version of McGrath’s book. At the close of the audio version, there were two recordings of Lewis which somewhat brightened my perspective on his death.

About the image above: I stopped and took this photo while I was walking and listening to the biography. The flowers are Rain Lilies. When park maintenance comes and mows down all the wildflowers, these flowers spring up quickly, especially if there is any rain. They seem apropos the subject.

*I began writing a poem while walking and listening to the final chapters of Lewis’ biography:

The End of Biography
How can it be so humid
In this arid place?
The rain within me
Wants to fall,
And surely will
Before the day is done.

The story I have finished now
Is of a man who died.
Oh sure, he lived,
And still his fame endures…
But after all he died.
And so will you,
And so will I.

Death, for now,
Is the final chapter
Of all biography.

Low on the Horizon

I finally know what cloud formation it was that inspired this poem 30 years ago. Having grown up in the highlands of Mexico, I was accustomed to the look of clouds spilling over a mountain range. The SHELF CLOUD formation can mimic that look even in the flat lands of Texas. Knowing this does not diminish the longing I have for the real thing, be it here and now or there and ever. (The background photo was a free-to-use download from Pixabay; wish I could take credit for it!).