A Heavenly Mosaic

What is heaven like? The author of Revelation uses measurements and materials to describe it. The length and width and height of the New Jerusalem are each 1,400 miles. The city is comprised of pure gold—transparent like glass—pearls, and all kinds of precious stones. (NLT, Revelation 21)

The Apostle Paul uses a very different kind of imagery. Quoting Isaiah, he bursts into the glories of the Good News.  

“‘What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived’—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.” (NIV, 1 Corinthians 2:7-10)

Paul also writes of heavenly splendors at least twice in 2 Corinthians. The first is his reference to “an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” on which C. S. Lewis elaborates in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory.” (See 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.)  The second is the veiled description of his own experience: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.” There he heard inexpressible things. (See 2 Corinthians 12:1-10.)

Perhaps that experience enabled Paul to write elegantly elsewhere about life-with-God. Consider, for example, his doxology at the end of Romans chapter 11:

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
    How unsearchable his judgments,
    and his paths beyond tracing out!
‘Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counselor?’
‘Who has ever given to God,
    that God should repay him?’
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
    To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (NIV, 1984)

Some would say that attentiveness to heaven is pointless, perhaps foolish. But C. S. Lewis assures us that it is not. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis affirms that it is appropriate to dream about a happy world beyond our own, “for it is woven into the whole fabric of our faith” (Chapter 10, Paragraph 1). In Mere Christianity he insists, “The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.” He advises, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither” (Book 3, Chapter 10, Paragraph 1).

I want to take full advantage of that advice to imagine what unadulterated life with God will be like. In his book titled Pain and Providence, Jesuit scholar Ladislaus Boros suggests a way to delve into our eternal homeland. He advises us to meditate on our experiences in this world. “The Christian must look into his whole being and the whole world of his experience for the presence of heaven.” Boros believes that this is the basic exercise of our spiritual life. Each individual piece of our experience may seem insignificant, like small glass fragments; but when we place them together, they make up a wonderful mosaic of our eternal homeland—of heaven. (110-111)

In order to construct a personal mosaic, Boros urges us to meditate on three types of experiences. The first is our experience of grace—those hours when God seems quite close to us, when we directly encounter his nature. Those times are part of “the priceless secret of the Christian soul” (111).

Boros also advises us to consider moments when we witness God’s glory in the created order. A sentence that helps me understand this reality is the second line of the Sanctus in the Mass:

“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts.

Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.”

Boros reminds us: “Suddenly out of the darkness of our existence there appeared something that is hidden in mystery, in a mystery into which we can enter ever more deeply” (111).  For example, there is a magical quality in each of the seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. Surely each of us has beheld God’s glory in the beauty of babies and young children. So Boros concludes, “In all these experiences the world becomes transparent to something other than itself: to heaven” (112).

There is a third kind of experience: the longing for the infinite. We humans constantly yearn for more. We lean toward the future. The desire for something better never dies. “At the centre of all these human dreams, at the point of convergence of all these longings, is heaven” (112-113).

While considering these ideas, it occurred to me that I could piece together a mosaic comprised of my own glimpses of glory. This mosaic would be a kind of memoir forming an image that anticipates my life-with-God. It could also be a legacy to my family, a witness to God’s grace. While it is tempting to try to fit my experiences into the three types suggested by Boros, it would be better to select some of the hints of future splendors, regardless of the category, to convey inklings of the radiance yet to be fully revealed.

In fact, many pieces of glass are sitting on my computer. They await my picking them up, looking at them afresh, cleaning them up (editing them), and arranging them to form an image, a vision, of what life-with-God may be like.

© Stan Bohall, October 6, 2015