The Heavenly Realms

I used to have a cardboard print of a painting which showed a beautiful angel in a palace. The scripture inscribed on it (I Corinthians 2:9) talked about all the wonderful things that we would see and do in heaven. It said that we couldn't even imagine what it would be like. That painting gave me hope when I was having a bad day. Then one Sunday at church, a visiting preacher talked about how this verse was talking about things we could have in Christ now. I was confused and didn’t want to accept that. How could my reality, which seemed so dark because of a certain type of illness, be like heaven now? It took years for me to understand what he meant.

We often think of heaven as a place we will go one day, to see Jesus and our loved ones. And that is true; Jesus is preparing a place for us where he is the light. But Ephesians 1:3 tells us that heaven is a part of our reality now. This verse is part of a prayer, at the beginning of Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. If you know who the Apostle Paul is, you know he has quite a story. This may be just me, but I believe that every time he wrote a letter, he praised God for changing him from the man who used to kill Christians to the man who wrote letters to minister to them. That was evidence in his life of the heavenly realms he talks about in this verse.

Another thing to marvel at in the story of Paul is that he was in prison while he wrote this letter. His circumstances were anything but glorious, and here he was talking about the present realities of heaven!

God has been healing me so much over the years, yet I still deal with the realities of mental illness. But I am beginning to understand how I can experience the realities of heaven now. Through faith, through the Holy Spirit, and through reaching out to others about what he has done for me, I can experience the heavenly realms today even while living in this broken world. And so can you.

Dear Father, thank you for blessing me with blessings from the heavenly realms, even when I couldn’t see it or it didn’t make sense to me. Help me to keep reaching for your hand as I navigate through this world, which can be anything but heavenly. Thank you. In Jesus name, amen.

Throughout this day: ask God to help you be aware of the realities of heaven now.