Engaging God's World: Longing & Hope

The frailty of humanity can best be seen in our successes, with what we are content to call satisfying. “We are half-hearted creatures,” says Lewis, “fooling about with drink and sex”. In our quest for home we all too easily settle for a park bench.
I understand why we settle, why we are too easily pleased with pursuit of sensual pleasures. All we see is the world, this pale world of inns and park benches. We try again and again to attain permanent contentment, but our longing is never fulfilled.

This leads to two responses: settling for what happiness we can get out of this life, or an urge to look even beyond this world for joy. Yet this search for joy beyond the bounds of the world is dangerous, for it is putting trust in what we cannot see.

And yet, whether we believe there is something beyond this physical world or not, we still have an idea of a world better than our own, even if we cannot imagine it.

It is this tenacious idea of a better world, I think, that prevents us from imagining heaven. Sure we’ve got our hell. It’s got cruel leaders, cries of mourning, and a constant vapour of despair. Oh yes, we’re quite comfortable when it comes to Hell. In fact, it looks a lot like earth sometimes. But we have problems with heaven. We mature Christians dismiss clouds and harps. But I think every one of us is secretly disappointed by any description of heaven. We enjoy Dante’s Inferno but frankly find his Paradisio rather dull. We aren’t happy with heaven being pinned down. Our longing is so acute that we won’t allow our desire to be satiated by a description. We can only imagine a heaven that we can’t imagine.