The Shores of Heaven

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy,  C S Lewis wrote of the first beautiful thing he ever saw.  It was a little toy garden his brother had constructed in a cookie tin.  He put some moss and sticks in it,  and made it look like a real garden.

Lewis was taken with the little object, not, he said because it was so beautiful, but because it formed the image he always had in his mind about what heaven must be.  He imagined it as a cool, green place, where one could wander in beauty forever.

Lewis’ mind moved from a simple little cookie tin to imagine eternity. He wrote that the beauty we experience on earth, paltry though it may be, formed our images of what was to come, and helped us envision the unimaginable joys of heaven. 

Prayer is like that.  Our prayers may seem small and stumbling—certainly they are not beautiful—but they do point to something that is yet to come. Our prayer times are symbols of a communion that is not yet ours, our eternity in heaven.

When we pray—really pray, that is, not some mumbling recitation to a God we only partially imagine, but the kind of prayer that becomes real communion—we enter the outskirts of heaven. We stand on the shore and look inland, and see the peaks of a far-away mountain, more beautiful and majestic than anything we can imagine.

Let’s not just stand on the shore. Let’s pursue praise, thanksgiving,  confession and petition,  moving always inward and upward, towards the peaks of our communion with God.

No matter where we are in our prayer lives, we are the merest beginners. We have so much farther to go in Him.  Don’t stop climbing. Don’t stop worshipping, even though some days may seem dry and pointless. God’s presence is with us, and we will find Him if we seek.

God,  keep me going onward and upward in my relationship to you,  always coming to understand you better, always letting you reveal yourself to me in new ways. Thank you for taking me this far, and help me to go farther-much father—still. In Jesus’ name.  Amen.