I’ve been listening to all The Bible Project podcasts, from the beginning. I saw their video series titled The Wisdom Series and was so blown away I wanted to learn more. So I started listening to the podcasts and quickly happened upon The Heaven and Earth Series, or was on purpose, led there (thank you, Papa)! One of the concepts explored in the series is that heaven isn’t a place above us, or somewhere we only get to go in the future, but that the kingdom of God is actually all around us right now. I imagined not a place in the sky where we one day go, but a sort of an interdimensional layer that is all around us all the time, where our connection to God is strongest. For the sake of accuracy of conversation, I am going to leave the theological arguments to the scholar. However, I do intend to stick to what I know best, imagination.
When I first started hearing about this idea I thought about The Flash. “Of course you did Ina, you’re a nerd,” Thank you! And yes, I am. Go with me here. There is this concept explored in the storyline of The Flash of metahumans that can travel from one place to another using pocket dimensions. How do I explain this? Well, I suppose it is not very far from the ideas presented in A Wrinkle in Time; between time and space, there are dimensions that only individuals who can travel through both could see. My understanding is that these places or pockets exist all around us anyway, but if you are not gifted with the ability to travel through these dimensions you have no way to be aware of them let alone move freely in and out of them. But let’s say for argument’s sake that there were some force or source inside certain pocket dimensions that is so intrinsically linked to your being that even without an awareness of pocket dimensions when you pass one, you feel something. That’s the point, here is the picture; you walk into a church and unconsciously bow your head, you come to the peak of a mountain and without thinking close your eyes and breath deeply, your child is born, or you wake up to your spouse and a peace you can’t explain washes over you. What if what you are experiencing is the pocket dimension of heaven? In other words, a little bit of heaven leaking through to earth. That question is followed by another, what if heaven/the kingdom of God was, is and will be here taking up the same space as earth already. Not in the brokenness of humans or the evil that very obviously hangs around, but in pocket dimensions we can’t quite see (yet), but we strongly sense are there.
Perhaps the gift of our salvation is the power of being able to enter these dimensions even if only for a moment and then come back and assure the rest of the world that those feelings they get when they pass pocket dimensions of heaven are based on something very real. Maybe the promise of Revelation is that ultimately through Jesus, God will reach into these dimensions and draw out the kingdom of God like an elastic curtain or veil and stretch the perfection of those dimensions over the brokenness of this one. Creating a new world that we sensed all along was there, but could never have imagined fully. What if?
*Please note I claim no theological accuracy, only an openness of mind and encouragement of questions.
Live long, prosper.
Ina
Jesus Girl 