Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

-- R. Burns Epistle to a Young Friend

Friday, January 11, 2013

Heaven on Earth



If Heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t wanna go – Hank Williams, Jr.

Heaven is not a place, but a consciousness of God. – Anonymous

Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. -- John 14:23

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ … -- Acts 17:26-28 (emphasis mine)


In the quote from Acts, as Paul spoke upon the Areopagus in Athens, we can catch a glimpse of how and why the Apostle was so successful in “turning the world upside down”.  All that those non-Jewish people had learned, how they lived, their myths and poetry pointed toward the One True God.  The heart of man is open.  Paul offered them, not gods atop Olympus, but God alive on the throne of their own being, present, immediate, aware – the living God of love and mercy and righteousness. 

We have the same need today.  Old men like me wax nostalgic for the world of the 1950s where another generation recalled the 1920s.  We are all, as the old song cries, longing for home.  The people, the voices, the laughter, the food, the music speak to us and point us to the One from whom we came and to whom we journey.  Our little customs and traditions are signs on the way.  He is present in the way we build our houses, in the hills we climb, in winter snows and summer rains, in tribulations and hardships, in joys and triumphs. 

Heaven will be a lot like Dixie for some of us, a lot like the Ozarks for me.  That which makes me love these poor, rocky hills with their multiplicity of streams and little secret springs is Heaven, for He made this path to lead me home. 

9 comments:

julie said...

We have the same need today. Old men like me wax nostalgic for the world of the 1950s where another generation recalled the 1920s.

I received a hardback copy of the first five Little House books for Christmas. Haven't read them since I was a kid, but always loved the stories and hope at least one of my kids will too. Anyway, reading them makes me nostalgic for a life a ways farther back than that; 1800s, not 1900s. Not so much for the hardship, though living rough (certainly by my current standards) never bothered me. What I miss, as it were, is the ideals of the time - the values of work and family that permeated the culture.

Ironically, to some extent I think it's the same romanticized notion of simpler lives that leftists dream about, when they prescribe ever more stringent reductions in the luxuries they think other people should have. Like they always do, they confuse the outward markers of happy lives with the interior culture required to express those markers naturally.

Thus, they believe that giving middle-class houses to people who haven't earned them will make those people live middle-class lives and values in response. And they believe that "simplifying," by forcing people to live smaller, and to make do with less and lesser quality, they will somehow create a return to the idyllic lifestyle of the noble savage. Kind of like the Amish, but without all that icky religious stuff. Or like some imagined tribe of peaceful Indians.

In reality, the "feel" of those times that we miss has almost everything to do with interior states of being; cultures based in Truth will always have an aura of heaven about them, no matter what their outward trappings, and cultures turned away from Truth will always have the stink of hell.

Speaking of which, I'm also reminded of something I read by Rita Vernoy a few years back: the Indians they lived with in the Amazon believed heaven would be like the missionaries' house: a place with four walls and hard floors instead of dirt...

mushroom said...

...the "feel" of those times that we miss has almost everything to do with interior states of being; cultures based in Truth will always have an aura of heaven about them,...

That is it exactly. Well said.

Good point about the Amazonian Indians as well, I think that's how you get the New Jerusalem as a "heavenly city". Every festival the Israelites would go up to the temple and developed their streets of gold imagery from that.

As far as Little House, I've been out to Laura and Almanzo's place a couple of times -- once when I was in 5th grade then a few years back with my granddaughter. The thing I didn't notice when I was 10 was the ceiling. Almanzo must have been about 5'4" and Laura was under 5'. Tiny people. I'm still under 6' in my street shoes and felt compelled to crouch a little, especially in the kitchen.

Those are great books to read aloud to kids. Our fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Nichols, decided to read two or three of them to us during one period in the afternoon and got all of us -- even the boys, more interested in literature. We lived in the northern part of Wright County. Mansfield is in south end.

julie said...

Interesting that Almanzo was so small. From the account of his childhood, even though they worked their butts off every day they ate a ton. Most of Farmer Boy seemed to be descriptions of meals, which were both heavy and featured a wide variety of foods, so I doubt he was malnourished.

mushroom said...

Right, probably not malnutrition. I think the average American male (race and age adjusted) has increased a couple of inches in height from the Revolutionary War period, but Almanzo would have been short even back then. Genetics kicked him outside the standard deviation.

All the pictures I've seen indicate he was a sturdy fellow.

Rick said...

Awesome. Julie latched onto the same two sentences I did. Which reminds of a Woody Allen movie from a couple years ago, Midnight in Paris, if you haven't seen it. It's good.

My wife has been watching the Little House TV series lately. We both grew up watching those. DVRs are great for this. It's been interesting to see how they changed over the years. The earliest ones seem to be the best.

John Lien said...

Good post Mush and good insights Julie. That Acts passage is interesting. It's very inclusive. The implication being God put you when and where you are for a reason and what is important is that you seek him. Definitely not a "join us or fry" mentality.

I love where I live but it doesn't feel like home. I've mentioned this elsewhere, it seems about once a week I dream of a mountainous place by a clear blue sea. Kind of like Mount Athos or Montenegro. It's so beautiful until it morphs into something else, as dreams do. Y'all please come by and visit me, we'll go fishing or just take a hike. It will be grand.

mushroom said...

Rick, I heard about that -- Owen Wilson, Lightning McQueen -- I like him. He goes back to hang out with all the ex-pats like Hemingway. Sounds interesting.

John, the thing that always strikes me when I think about "home" is that it always has a sense of timelessness about it, like I was living in eternity back then when I know good and well I wasn't. Or, as I think about it, maybe I was.

Outside of time and space, in this life or another one, you know it when you see it.

In fact, that Acts verse surprised me when I copied it. I was thinking of only "in Him we live and move and have our being", but when I saw the whole of it, it turned my initial thought upside-down.

julie said...

John, that sounds marvelous. Next time I'm passing through, I'll stop by...

Rick said...

"Lightning McQueen"

I had to look that up. I love Pixar (and cars) but I haven't seen that one. I really should.

Yes, Midnight in Paris is good. We don't buy that many movies on DVD but we did that one. My wife and I really enjoyed it. We knew nothing about it going into the theater so it was a nice surprise (the going back thing is well done) not you're typical time travel deal. Great casting for these characters, Toulouse Lautrec is one of the best.

Wait? Who? That's a hint of a hint to the point of the movie which Woody is raising and you are raising with this post.

Woody's latest, To Rome with Love, almost seems like it might be the same movie except, hey lets go to Italy, but it's its own thing. The crowd in the theater was mostly older folk and we all enjoyed the big belly laughs. Woody is in it and he can still make little jokes into big laughs.