On Earth

You know when Jesus closes his prayer and says, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."? Well, I've been thinking a lot about that lately. This past week in Sunday school, we kept talking about the point of Christianity being Grace, being saved from eternal punishment, a loving God giving us eternal life if we choose it in the way we're told He (She) wants it. Now, I love that Sunday school, but I'm not so sure about the theology anymore. What I've been taught all these years growing up in the church misses the point. It's got to.

I'm reinventing my eschatology, because I'm just not convinced that Heaven's so exclusive and Hell's so default. But good grief! is that too much to talk about in one blog post, and it's not what I want to focus on anyway. I don't think Jesus wanted us to focus on it so much, not in the ways we're doing it now at least.

Okay, here's my theory. Think about what pisses you off, disturbs, or saddens you most about life here on earth (I'm thinking about kids being abandoned, orphaned, left feeling unloved and unwanted). Now imagine the best Heaven you can possible conjure up (I'm thinking about everyone feeling totally loved and wanted, everyone belonging and communing continually). Whatever you just imagined--for that will look very different from person to person--is your responsibility. Jesus said so himself. "On Earth as it is in Heaven." Jesus seems more concerned about widening the gaps to let Heaven crash into Earth here and now than He is about us one day being in Heaven later.

Maybe that little exercise in imagination doesn't work for everyone, but it definitely works for me. We've got to start laboring and toiling and never stop striving to bring to Earth that vision of Heaven each of us has. It may seem futile work (it very well may be), but it seems the only thing worth our blood.