Wednesday nights...

The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.
- C.S. Lewis

Man, I just had the most incredible night.

I was driving to Caribou after work, but I happened upon Lake Calhoun during the sunset. It was way too breathtaking of an opportunity to pass over.

So I changed, right then and there in the car, into some running clothes and gave that lake a run. It was incredible. By the time I got back to my car, it was pitch dark, but the random lights here and there reflecting off the lake were still more beautiful than my heart could handle.


I got to caribou, ordered a coffee, arranged myself so that I was curled up by the fire, and read the rest of The Sacred Romance. Can I just say that this is, save the Bible, the best book I've ever read in my life. About five months ago I tried to read it and had to put it down because I didn't think I was ready for it. I understand more now why I did that because I couldn't think of a more appropriate time to read it than in these last few weeks.

Over the last month or so, the underlying theme in everything that God has been showing me has been hope. I don't know, maybe that's been the theme the entire time and I'm just finally getting it...I went to a seminar in Illinois about hope, and the guy running it encouraged us to be allowing every single moment in our lives to be invigorating our hope for what is in store for us when we finally get where we're meant to be. And of course there were those five hours I spent watching The Shawshank Redemption which led me to write down every verse in the bible that used the word "hope."

Man, hope.

Of course we're dissapointed [in the things we put our hope into - careers, relationships, vacations, etc.] - we're made for so much more. "He has also set eternity in the hearts," (Eccl. 3:11)..." If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy," C.S. Lewis wrote, "the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."


How exciting is it to imagine that other world? I mean, really. It seems childish sometimes to let our imaginations run wild...but we've got to let them run wild...whatever our wildest imaginations can hold about Heaven, what lies in store for us is far beyond it. Think of the hope that can arise from our own imaginations!

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him
- Corinthians 2:9

We cannot outdream God.







The White Stone
You'll have to forgive my stream-of-thought-ish post, but now I want to talk about this "white stone." It's probably one of my favorite things to think about in regards to Heaven. I guess it was one of those things that was so confusing to me the first time I heard about it that I could not stop thinking about it. It comes from Revelations 2:17:

And I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it.


The authors of The Sacred Romance on page 162 describe it this way:
When we get to heaven, God will give us a white stone with a name on it that only he knows; the kind of name one lover calls another in private because it reveals something very personal about their relationship.

George Macdonald, a theologian, describes it this way:

It is the man's own symbol - his soul's picture, in a word - the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is...It is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can he understand what his name signifies...Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name...that being whom He had in His thought when He began to make the child, and whom He kept in His thought through the long process of creation that went to realize the idea. To tell the name is to seal the success - to say "In thee also I am well pleased." (Unspoken Sermons) (bold is my own emphasis)

So.....exciting.

So, anyhow, that's the short version of what God was showing me tonight. I was excited about it and knowing how easily it is for me to forget the things God shows me shortly after they've been shown, I felt like I needed to get it down before I went to bed...If you read through it all, wow, thanks!