How is heaven to come down to earth?

Often in the prayers of the early church God is referred to as Eternal One. In some records of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray, it ends with these words: Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.

God is the forever One—an idea we both cannot comprehend and that the strangest things bear light upon it. Not hyper-spiritual, mountain-top experience things, but rather mundane, ordinary, daily things.

Not even positive things, by our general measure, but rather confining, limited things. Things—like the constraints of time—leave us hints about eternity, the way when my kids disobey me I get hints about their needs and inner world.

It’s like this thin layer gets pulled back that we didn’t even know was there and that if you asked us if we wanted to take a peek, we’d almost assuredly say no to—because, pain. And therein lies the joy of this ironic reality. Before we ever even ask, we get to know truth through daily living. The only question is, will we listen?

When we fail or fall to hard ground, to us it only feels like hard rock ungiving and unkind. But there is a foundation there that has already been laid and that no one can change, not even us. The Scriptures call that foundation Messiah, our salvation.

To believe this is to worship. To question it is still to draw near. We often believe lies that would plug our ears and dull our senses, yet if we’ll listen close, even as we bring our questions, we’ll hear the whisper of the thinnest veil pull back, instructing us in a good place to build.

“You are the voice of my Beloved,
let me hear Your forever voice to my core
and I will be changed,
even if through fire—like a woman at the height of labor!
Birth me into the reality of You.”

Pray, Like a Woman in Labor, Raynna Myers, pg. 107

May it be.

May it be that we have eyes that see and ears that hear the miraculously normal wonders that so often come from Rock.

The line of Jesus’ prayer, “Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever״ may never have been in the original text but it is not only an opportunity to worship, it is also an invitation home—to our foundation, our rock, the Eternal One, who brings water from rock and beauty from ashes.

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” -G.K. Chesterton

I didn’t know how these thoughts and prayers would weave together for me to share with you at the time, but these photos I am sharing here today are rock formations from volcanic eruptions. They are lava beds where natural bridges from lava tubes and canyons with waterfalls flowing into them formed years ago and though surely desolate then, now life abounds significantly and powerfully. Beauty from ashes.

There is a warmth and embrace and bridge to sanity here that we need in our middle of the night prayers, the ones we pray after we’ve woke with anxiety again. We need this when we rise, when we go on our way, when we lay down to sleep. This is both our inheritance and our destiny from the One whose kingdom is forever.

What wonder we have in our grasp in the prayer Jesus taught His disciples, it teaches us the way heaven bends down to earth everyday.

Breathing in the wonder with you, and I’m pretty sure that’s called prayer.

May the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

 


Hello kindreds! Thank you for reading my offering, my own birthing of hope in the Eternal One. If this writing stirs truth within you would you consider sharing it with someone else? I’m grateful you are here. If it feels like a place to grow then please stay awhile and subscribe, I’ll send you one of my poems to extend a warm welcome. To have a further companionship in prayer, check out my book here.

 

All photography ©Raynna Myers 2018