Love builds

Last Sunday, Monty, who preached for our consecration Sunday, used this verse to focus some of the message:

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.1 Corinthians 15:58

He explained that work done in love, here, plants seeds in heaven. 

Consider that for a moment.  We often wonder if the love we share -- the work we do -- has any impact at all.  There are times we are gifted to know the effects of what we do, but there are times when it seems as if no good has come of hard work.  We lack the hope to believe that what we cannot see even exists.

And yet, we are kingdom workers.  The care given to someone today has an effect in heaven.  Has an effect in the Kingdom of God, which is now and not yet. 

Staggering when you think about it.  Love builds. 

Who goes to heaven?

Someone told me the other day that the idea that everyone would go to heaven was sad.  She thought the idea made her life futile.

This is what I believe.  Everyone is a beloved child of God.  His ultimate plan, I think, is that everyone would join him in the Kingdom of God.  Far from it being sad that everyone would end up in heaven, it would actually be a time of rejoicing, as God's purpose and love for the world would be somewhat fulfilled.

Inadequate words

I'm reading the book Undiscovered Country: Imagining the World to Come by Peter Hawkins.  It's the text for our church's upcoming Convocation. 

There are many great thoughts in the book, but one struck me for this post.  The author is focusing on Dante's Divine Comedy, and its three sections -- Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise.

In the Paradise section, Hawkins is discussing how Dante continually states his inadequacy as an author to use words to describe heaven.   "After all, can anyone truly "succeed" when describing light, love or God?"

Isn't that true?  Wouldn't we all agree that words or even our thoughts are inadequate to describe God.  Yet, as we look at the Bible, there are some of us who believe that every word is meant as literal, and that God can only be as described in the words of the book.

I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, and yet I know that it is human words.  It cannot possibly completely describe God.  We see now in a mirror dimly.

Love, unimaginable

I'm one of those people who likes to play with color. It's one of the motivating factors for me in craft work -- beading, knitting, stitching, card making -- I love working with different colors. The photographs that really appeal to me are the ones with amazing colors. When I use my camera, I'm capturing color.

That's one of the reasons that the phrase I talked about yesterday really appealed to me -- hundreds of millions of colors in heaven that we can't imagine yet.

Wow.

One of the phrases associated with the Emmaus Walk program is De Colores. "Of the Colors."

Emmaus is about the love of God. If you learn nothing about God except the immensity and grace-full-ness of his love, then you have still received a priceless gift. And it's only a small, tiny, dim image of heaven.

Love, with hundreds of millions of facets we have never imagined. I think that's what heaven is like.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

Hundreds of Millions of Colors

Do you remember when you were very young, "paint by number" kits? The image was printed on a "white board" in kind of blue ink, as I recall. Each color area was numbered, and you painted the picture by matching the colors with the numbers.

I specifically remember painting a picture of a deer in snowy woods.

The problem with those kind of kits is that the picture looks choppy. There aren't enough colors to actually paint a realistic picture.

I received an email from a friend today recommending that I watch a particular YouTube video (the link is here if you would like to watch it) called Drawing Heaven. It is about a 12 year old girl with an amazing artistic talent. She talks about the relationship she has with God and how she is able to translate the visions she has of heaven into painted images. She said, "(In heaven) there are hundreds of millions of colors that we don't' know yet."

That phrase stuck with me. I think she's probably right, and about more than just the colors in heaven. There is so much that we have no words for. There aren't enough words or colors in our palettes to describe heaven or even God. We do the best we can with our rudimentary paint by number kits, but there will come a time when the picture will be clearer, and we will know.

Until then, we can't even imagine it.

Images: Stained glass in United Methodist Temple in Beckley