To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

He says I am with you always and then disappears from sight.

He promises never to leave us, yet we cannot touch His hands and feet.

It can seem like a painful hoax sometimes, this promise of Jesus to remain, especially in those times when we would give up everything just to have Him hold us in His arms.

Yet if we trust that He is not a liar, not given to cruel jokes, there must be some way in which this is true.

If God is three-in-one, if three are God and God is three, then when the Holy Spirit comes to take up residence within, it is, in some mysterious way, also Jesus Himself living in our hearts.

Jesus speaks interchangeably about Himself and the Spirit in John.

You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.

Jesus is God and the Spirit is God and God abides in us for eternity.

Yet I think there are more layers to this.

The Bible seems to teach that heaven is right here, separated from earth only by a veil just as the Garden of Eden was separated from the temple of the universe, just as the Holy of Holies was separated from the rest of Solomon’s temple.

Jesus is in heaven and Jesus is right here with us. It is just that we cannot see Him until that day, that beautiful, glorious day, when heaven and earth will be one again, when the veil will be lifted and He who is our very life will appear.

And we shall be made like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

May it be so. May we trust that it is so. Amen and Amen.

Art credit: All photographs this week are by Kirk Sewell