Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now

Heaven is not built of country seats,
But little queer suburban streets.

Christopher Morley

The glimpses come when least expect them. When I'm not studying, not praying, not trying to develop the discernment of a Father Brinckerhoff -- not thinking about heaven at all. Just, all at once, there l am...

I was driving from our house to the village of Mt. Kisco one afternoon, as I do a dozen times a week, with the usual list of errands --a package to be weighed at the post office, dry cleaning to drop off. I was stopped by the traffic light at the edge of town. I was sitting at the wheel, watching the cars turn onto Route 133 from Maple Avenue, waiting for the light to turn and wondering how long the line at the post office would be, when suddenly... I was filled with a nearly unbearable love for the people in every car I saw.

It actually ached, the yearning for each of them was so strong. How gracious that driver signaling his turn! How patient the woman in the car behind him! How infinitely valuable every driver, every passenger...

The light changed and the moment passed. How long did it last -thirty seconds? It was as if for the blinking of an eye the curtain that shielded me from reality had lifted, and I'd felt a fraction of what God felt as he brooded over that intersection.

If the curtain had not dropped again at once, I think the intensity of feeling would have torn me apart. Nor could I sustain that love for other drivers; soon the roads filled again with tailgaters behind me and dawdlers in front. But for one indelible moment, an utterly ordinary scene had been, in a sense, unmasked: At the juncture of Route 133 and Maple Avenue was the gate of heaven.

Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God.
And only he who sees takes off his shoes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If the portals of heaven can swing open on a suburban street, they can open anywhere. It's new eyes, not new settings, that make the difference.

Take off your shoes! God cautions Moses as he approaches the burning bush. The place where you are standing is holy ground.

And where is this sanctified spot? Not in some splendid palace of Moses' youth. Not in one of the awesome Egyptian temples he knew so well. The holy ground is an ordinary patch of desert where Moses, as he does every day, is herding sheep. Just another rugged stretch of the wilderness where he's fled, like Jacob, to escape trouble back home. But because Moses stops and looks, he detects the presence of God.