Adriana pressed her forehead gently against the cool windowpane, watching the trees sway and dance as if whispering secrets to one another. She could see the branches bend, the leaves shimmer, and the grass ripple in soft waves, yet the wind itself remained invisible—always present, always felt, but never seen. As she watched the world move without a visible mover, she wondered how something so real could hide so completely, as if the wind were a shy friend who preferred to speak through the trees rather than show its face.
In the Bible, ‘heaven‘ often simply means the spiritual realm where God lives, not an actual place up in the clouds with angels, pearly gates, and such.
But where is that place where God lives actually located? I like the way N. T. Wright, a Bible teacher, puts it:
‘Heaven’ and ‘earth’, as I have often said, are not, in biblical theology, separated a great gulf, as they are in much popular imagination. ‘Heaven’, God’s sphere of reality, is right here close beside us, intersecting with our ordinary reality. It is not so much like a door opening high up in the sky, far away. It is more like a door opening right in front of us where before we could only this room, this field, this street. Suddenly, there is an opening leading into a different world…
N.T. Wright – Revelation For Everyone
Going to Heaven?
Did you know that the Bible never uses the phrases “go to heaven” or “going to heaven” to describe what happens to people when they die? That’s because heaven isn’t a place where people are going someday; it’s a place where God is right now.
Heaven isn’t a place that we go as a reward for being good, like Disneyland. It’s not a location on a map, like Chicago or New York, that we can find directions to or roads that take us there.
So, where is that place where God lives? Well, it’s all around us. It’s next to us, above us, and below us. God lives in the unseen places that surround and fill everything.
Like the wind all around us that we can’t see, yet moving the things that we can see.
We’ve talked about heaven quite a bit; next, we’ll take a little tour of how we should think about hell. Ooooohhhhhh!
Child of God, husband, father, grandfather, rabblerouser, songwriter, pot stirrer, waiting for the King.