Someday heaven and earth will be joined together as one.
The veil between will be torn away and there will be no more separation.
No more tears, no more pain, no more loneliness, no more separation.
God will fully dwell with us and we will fully be his people.
We long for this day and yet God has given us a preview, a foretaste of this joining together of heaven and earth.
After the resurrection, Jesus returned to heaven in his newly resurrected body, his earthly body that was able to be at home in heaven just as it was on earth.
At Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit entered into the disciples, they were transformed into earthly people who contained a heavenly person within them. They were transformed into people who stood in both heaven and earth at the same time.
We are people who stand in both heaven and earth at the same time.
We who are Jesus-followers, we who have the heavenly Spirit of God inside of us, are people who stand at the intersection of heaven and earth and work for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
This is never more true than when we pray.
When we are solidly on earth and speaking to or listening to God in heaven, we are joining God’s kingdom to earth in a way that gives us a slight taste of what it will be like when heaven and earth are wholly one.
It whets our appetite and stirs us up to work all the harder to bring God’s kingdom to earth.
We desperately need heaven and earth people right now.
Our world needs people who will stand at the intersection between heaven and earth and pray for that joining to be complete.
Our world needs people who are at home in both realities.
Our world needs people who will bring earthly concerns into heaven through prayer and who will bring heaven’s rule to earth through their work.
We are heaven and earth people, and we must not become so troubled by these earthly concerns that we forget who is really going to restore our world, yet we must not become so enamored with the heavenly reality that we forget the work that is ours to do to bring God’s kingdom rule to earth.
We are given the gift, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, of being the ones to stand at the overlap of heaven and earth and work to make them fully one as they once were. It is an astonishing gift.
So let us be heaven and earth people who are working for the restoration of earth toward its rightful end of becoming one again with heaven.
Do not miss this adventure!
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Art credits: Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Jan Vermeer; Pentecost stained glass in St. Andrew chapel of St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague; Children at Prayer by Antoine Édouard Joseph Moulinet; Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet by Francesco Vanni