Heaven Isn’t Bored

To be a part of heaven you don’t need to be dead. You don’t need to theologize your way into all of the right/correct/accurate/true/perfect/flawless beliefs or habits. To make a splash, an impact, a did-that-just-happen moment, a heap of hope for hearts-gone-cold, you need only to remember that heaven has already come near.

Heaven is already here.

A heavenly human has experienced hell and found heaven hunting for their hurting heart, not to demand payment or explanation, but to end isolation and make every thing whole again.

The kindness of heaven waits for the right moment, turns the ordinary into the extravagant, knows when power has gone out, hears the cries for mercy, asks what it is that you want, heals, restores, and speaks life to the dead and the dead-inside.

There is this ancient invitation: repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near. This announcement wasn’t an empty threat. Unlike any invasion throughout all history, the undoing of the undoing was no longer waiting for the lifelong perfection pursuit to finally fling a perfected final draft at the foot of the waiting King. No. The King waited no more. The King invaded earth, with all of its hellish edges bent on turning his love inward, and in the middle of the mess, the King invites humanity to live another way because another way is actually, finally, throughly invading this old earth.

What is it that has lulled so many toward a bored-heaven-state?

Listen up, friends, family, nobody’s, somebody’s, enemies and misfits.

Heaven isn’t bored.

If it’s never happened to you, here’s your warning: heaven is hunting for you.

Heaven always happens first to our hearts, then to our homes, and heaven spreads, carried on every step, creating a new world where love and peace and faith and hope and kindness (oh, the kindness in the tone!) recreate and redeem the hurting, broken heart of our earthly home.

For too long, the purveyors of heavenly-admission-tickets have promised some version of life-after-death, a sort of fire-insurance meets harp-lessons meets gated-community meets whole-hearts meets final-destination.

What about life before death?

What about hope for today?

What about friends in a fire that hasn’t gone out?

What about joy?

What about here?

What about now?

What about life before death?

There is this ancient invitation: repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near. Instead of defeating defeat with accomplishment, the King surrendered to defeat. Defeated, he descended. Descended, he conquered. He undid what was undone. He ascended with all authority in heaven and earth back in his righteous possession. And he reconstituted everything he had recaptured for the good of the city and the glory of God. He gave to us heavenly humans, those hit by the heart-mending resurrection power, gifts and graces to carry heaven into all the earth, invading every hellish spot with a new spirit, a new love, a new life.

This, my friends, is life before death.

Heaven is here.

Heaven is now.

And heaven isn’t bored.

Heaven is done waiting.

Heaven is all in.

So if you’ve tasted bitter turns, grown tired and jaded because someone or something pretended to carry heaven, proclaiming allegiance to the selflessness of the King, while actually selfishly spreading hell in their wake, there is hope even for me and for you.

(even if you’ve been a victim, even if you’ve made others your victim, conscious or not.)

Listen.

1. That was not heaven.

2. That was misconstrued as love, but it wasn’t love.

3. You are not like them (even if it was you), nor do you have to be.

4. There is another way.

5. Heaven will win.

6. The invasion is still going.

7. There is still room for you.

8. Yes, even you.

9. Jesus loves you.

10. Yes, even you.

11. This love, the love of the King, will change you.

The entire invasion of heaven depends on the potency of love.

Sure, there are lists, notebooks of lists, shelves of notebooks of lists, libraries of shelves of notebooks of lists, cities of libraries of shelves of notebooks of lists of things that have gone wrong.

We can spend our breath and our energy adding to the lists.

Or we can set our bullhorns and pencils down.

Forgiveness has a way of finally letting things go.

Heaven is an invitation.

There is another way.

It is as close as changing the direction of your life.

And heaven only ever happens in one moment, in one choice, by one human – first in a heart, then in a home, and carried out in each step on the easy-yoked shoulders of a human that has been seen and loved and redeemed by the King.

Heaven isn’t bored.

May we find ourselves consistently caught redhanded in the invasion of heaven on earth.