heaven on earth

----this is old, but i had a problem having a blog with nothing written yet, so i added a little, but most of it was written a couple years ago----

If you've never seen the Shawshank Redemption, there's something wrong with you. I don't want to be offensive, so make up for it by getting it and watching it immediately. Enjoy it. But finish reading this first. I think I'll put that movie somewhere in my top seven, not exactly sure where, only because all seven are that good, but I think I've said enough to make my point. It's a good movie.

There are so many great things about it. I love the comment at the end concerning what went through the warden's head... I love the quotation about hope... I love retribution... I love how Andy always does the most random things to make life better despite the circumstances... like when he scores some beers for the guys while they're working on the roof or when he locks himself in the library and blasts music over the loud speakers. Everybody in the yard stops what they are doing just to enjoy the music, the escape from their less than desirable environment. It's amazing to watch someone's face when they are set free. It's like heaven has come down to earth for that moment.

We live in a dark world, and forgetting the darkness in our lives only brings us happiness while our memory is lapsing, while we imagine light. But the problem with imagining light is that there is no miracle in imagination. We simply "snap out of it" and return to our dark world. We live in that "shadow of death" and look forward to those moments of imagined light. Like the prisoners at Shawshank, we can escape from the present circumstances while the music is playing, but then we realize we are still prisoners.

We want something lasting, but in our world, all we really look for is the momentary joys of that imagined light. For some people its doing something ridiculously extreme, for some people it has something to do with music, for some its buying something new, others play video games or waste time doing something equally pointless. Everyone has their own brand of "imagined light." And anyone can understand that need to escape, but we have so much more at our fingertips.
I don't know anybody that wouldn't include romance in their list of "things that make me happy." And when it's true love (whatever that is) it doesn't just interrupt the darkness for only a few moments. When we experience love, we are lifted from the darkness. I don't think it has to be limited to romance. I think of seeing a friend of mine hold his newborn. But I find myself satisfied with my imagined light.

I take a good, hard look at my life, at the situations and circumstances I find myself in presently, and specifically, at the darkness I look forward to imagining-myself-out-of... when I take it all in and understand it, only then can I really appreciate the fact that God has made the imagined light a miracle, a reality. All of His love was channeled and concentrated into a single act of bringing light to earth. Think about all the darkness you and I live in, and then imagine Christ dying so that you could live above the darkness. It turns out, salvation isn't the only thing that results from Christ's sacrifice.

Despite the common idea that the only thing worth living for is dying and going to heaven, or maybe not going to hell, there is more to life. The powerful work of Christ on the cross allows us to live above the darkness, not just in our imaginations, but in reality. I'm not suggesting that life is always happy because Jesus came to earth... this isn't Sunday School and I know it doesn't work that way, but there is something bright about living a redeemed life. It's not because I'm specifically blessed, though I am (God sends rain on everybody), it's not because I get anything out of the deal, though somehow grace provides. It's a conscious realization that I need Him, and I have Him. That's the light I live in.

What more is heaven than the communion of God and man.

Think about that part in Shawshank Redemption when that music blasts over the prison yard. Think about the relief and the joy that comes over a person when they are lifted from darkness.

A.W. Tozer said, "When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on earth."