Beyond

 “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

Let’s say a good man, a missionary, goes to an impoverished country to share the gospel. He lives among the people, and loves them, and does all sorts of good works among them. He falls in love with a certain native woman, and as they spend time together, he tells her all about his homeland, America.

She has not even seen pictures of America. She cannot fathom the great buildings that reach into the skies; in her mind, they are like very tall mud huts, and she can’t conceive of the concept because she knows such a thing could not be built, and if it was built, it could not stand. He tells her about the grocery stores where there is an abundance of food in all its varieties, and clothing stores with every shape, size, and color of everything a person might want to wear. She can’t imagine having a place to get whatever you want; she looks for water each day so her children can have a drink, and the family wears just what they are given or find or make themselves.

He tells her about libraries, and hospitals, and restaurants. Computers, cell phones, movie theaters, orchestras. The beauty of purple mountain majesties, amber waves of grain, fruited plains. She tries to imagine such wealth, such majesty, but cannot.

They marry, and he brings her to America. Her eyes take in the sights that are beyond anything she imagined. Indeed, all the things she had pictured in her mind as he talked about his homeland were dwarfed by the actual enormity and beauty and vastness of all she saw and heard. The man knows she did not understand what he had been saying, because she had no basis of understanding, no experience with the things he was talking about.

This is how I feel when I consider eternity. I can’t grasp it. It’s so far beyond my intellectual reach—how God ALWAYS HAS BEEN and will NEVER STOP BEING, and that I will be with Him FOREVER—by His choice.

This is how I feel when I think about the look of heaven. Glassy seas? Pearly gates? Golden streets? The pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God? The only necessary Light coming from God Himself? What does it REALLY look like? Surely, what I’m picturing in my mind doesn’t begin to do justice to it.

This is how I feel when I try to picture God Himself, Almighty, kingly, majestic, Glorious Potentate of all things created and uncreated, seated on a throne, having a face, body, hands, fingers, arms, a back (all supported by Scripture)—and yet He is a Spirit. How can I picture a Spirit?

And perhaps this is the point. The kingdom of God is more, more, more than we can imagine. God Himself is beyond our imagining. We gladly let Him be what and who He is, in all His immensity and grandeur, benevolence and might, beauty and justice. We think we know what’s coming—but we don’t.

God, we rest in Your love, and are grateful beyond expression that You called us.