I am not sure why, but today I have found myself thinking about heaven.
Not about pearly gates and streets of gold, but more the way Jesus described heaven (or using his words the Kingdom of God – what Marcus Borg defines as how life would be if God were King and not Caesar). After years of traveling to and working in Nicaragua, I have come to understand parts of the Bible better than I ever did before.
After a week of eating rice and beans for three meals each day and I came to understood in a whole new way the stories Jesus told about banquets.
Imagine if all you ever had to eat was rice and beans.
And not for three meals a day, but for only one, maybe two, meals a day because that was all you could afford.
Each meal each day for your entire life.
Then, imagine being invited to and sitting down at a banquet.
More food than you had ever seen.
Spread across the table.
Enough and more than enough for all.
With no possibility of anyone leaving the table hungry.
That is what heaven is like.
That is what God is like.
Often when we are in Nicaragua we are building homes for families.
Roughly 16 feet by 16 feet.
Cement block walls and a tile floor and a roof that does not leak replacing scraps of wood and metal and plastic and mud.
A new home for 4 or 5 or 6 people.
16 feet by 16 feet.
In their words (not mine), a mansion.
One place in the Bible Jesus says (speaking about God), “In my Father’s house there are many rooms… And, paraphrasing, “And one of them is set aside for you.”
Really!
If you are lucky you have a 16’ by 16’ cement block house with a tile floor.
If you are not lucky you have plastic and scraps of wood and metal and walk around in the mud.
And, now you are promised your own room!
That is what heaven is like.
That is what God is like.
I have so much.
So many people around me have so much.
That we just can’t imagine what heaven like.
Or, for that matter, what God is like.