I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize the continuity between the immanence of God in our world and eternity. Rather than simply waiting to be liberated to another time or place, we are being invited to collaborate in the healing and redemption of our world.
I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.
Maybe heaven entailed more than a soul residing in a single place, but instead having pieces of yourself spread among the hearts and memories of people you've touched.
In my return to church, I had learned the hard way to avoid assumptions about other people's faith. For one thing, people kept surprising me. If I listened carefully to them, my conjectures about what they thought usually turned out to be wrong. For another thing, I was insecure enough about my own faith, such as it was, to resent other people telling me what they thought I believed and why they thought I believed it. So I tried to hear what my friends say about joining their loved ones after death without assuming I knew exactly what they meant.
To desire heaven is to delight in holiness.
...every time someone speaks a faith statement, it gives Heaven more energy. One ingredient to answered prayers is faith. Heaven runs on that power!
There have been many times in my life where I would tell God that I need encouragement right now because of my rough day. God would then have someone call me, email me or text me something positive or uplifting. God does not run out of resources on how to bless you and make you happy. He does everything He can to make sure you know that He cares and He will show up for you.
Everyone on Earth is on Death Row until they find a way out. It’s not so hard to find the way out. The problem is wanting to.
Can I go to heaven if you don't? And if I do go someplace where my paradise is detached from your eternity, where the hell am I?
Prayer is where I trade the rhetoric of men the for the promises of God. It is where I petition perfection instead of count on those who someone survived an election. It is to accept the incomprehensible invitation of God to have this weak voice of mine thunder down the halls of heaven and roll up to the throne of the God of all eternity so that as small as I am, I might have an audience with this “King of kings.” It is where my fatigue becomes a stage upon which God can unveil His strength in stunning fashion, and where my fear is obliterated by His courage. Prayer is where I rise above this tangled world and find myself enveloped by a world that I visit today, but will live in tomorrow. Prayer is utterly indispensable to this cringing existence, for unless I rise above it I will be consumed by the darkness of it. Prayer is this and does this and will always be this.
Prayer penetrates the underside of heaven and sends the full force of an invisible realm hurdling against the adversaries that are too naïve to understand what’s about to descend upon them.
أهذا ما تريده أن أخسر الدنيا والآخرة؟ ...جحيم الدنيا بين نار الصبر، ونار الندم علي الذنب، وجحيم الآخرة في جهنم التى وعدت العصاه أمثالي بها.
Holiness is the holy fire.
If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.
Find 'I Am' in you. Lead the blind to the truth. This is truly true to be for it is the Kingdom above all kingdoms. It is not as far as you think. As you think, you'll know but let the thought grow from the character of a man to his values.
It takes a spiritual soldier to maintain salvation.
The moment you start to fear God is the moment demons begin to fear you.
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)
As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting.