Heaven Revealed

On my desk shelf is a transparent Mason jar with a $20 bill curled up asleep on the bottom and a label that reads "Europe" in green ink. Hopes of the mysterious unknown lie in that jar below the gilded Classico lid with the copper boot and vivid mantra, "inspirato da autentiche ricette italiane" (go ahead and Google Translate it). Visions of roundabouts dance in my head whilst I type away at productive things- an article to be specific. This article is one of the many things I plan to have fund my future adventure. If hard work can do it, the next few years should find my Mums and I posing in front of famous buildings of antiquity with a turquoise camera and a baguette.



The thing is... I know what Europe looks like. I know we'll enjoy ourselves immensely. We'll take thousands of momentous photographs and smile 'til our cheeks lock. Then we'll fly back home and resume normality with nostalgic looks of contentment every time we drink creamed tea or sport a drippy umbrella. Until we grow discontent again and plot our next get-away. Why then the intense anticipation? If a trip is predictable, why do I get this unearthly flutter in my gut every time my eye lands on the Mason jar?

It seems petty to hold such blissful expectation of a simple thing like a place, but hasn't Christ implanted this anticipation in us for a purpose? We also have hopes, dreams, curiosities, and expectations of the heavenly unknown. We have a healthy discontentment with the here-and-now. All this is because we were made for another world. The moment of heaven's revealing will be utter ecstasy incomparable to the present yet completely fulfilling of it. God must prepare us for it now in tiny doses.

Ah, the adventures! The surprises, the sights, the beauty. The people, the music, the artistry, the glory. The King!

We can't truly fathom what eternity will be like until the timing is right. A line from one of my recent pieces of poetry says, "To contribute wealth is to have heaven revealed. No other thing has yet to be done." Just think: NOTHING we have experienced down here is ANYTHING like what is to come. But it is something like it. A hint, a taste. A reminiscence. [Yes, the present can be reminiscent of the future if God is outside of time. After all, heaven has existed for as long as Earth.] What is to come will set normality aside and supplant it with resplendent joy. I cannot wait.

That is why I have flutters in my gut when I glance at that Mason jar.