Quit Imagining and Do Something

I can only imagine

What it will be like

When I walk

By Your side

I can only imagine

What my eyes will see

When Your face

Is before me

This is the point when I admit how far out of step I am with the rest of popular American Christianity, and you will be obligated to denounce me.

 I don’t like this song.

It’s been around for awhile now – MercyMe wrote it back in 1999 for their album The Worship Project, but I have never really liked it.  Musically, it’s not terrible.  It has a nice enough melody. What I don’t like is the song’s failure to be in the here and now.

It’s completely focused on a “heaven someday…” kind of view.  The song says that I can’t know anything of heaven now.  I can only imagine what it might be like in the future.  And the song says that I can’t do anything of heaven.  I can only imagine it.

The dominant cultural associations and
misunderstandings about heaven has been at work for
so long, it’s almost automatic for many to think of heaven
as ethereal, intangible, esoteric, and immaterial.

Floaty, dreamy, hazy,
Somewhere else.
People in white robes with perfect hair floating by on
clouds, singing in perfect pitch. [i]

But what I see in reading the scriptures is that Heaven isn’t something that we can “only imagine” in the far off future someday – but heaven is with us, in us, and we are in it now.

Check the gospels – how many times did Jesus say “the kingdom of heaven is here” is “within you.”   Or check out what Paul said in Ephesians 2 – God has raised us up with Christ “and seated us with him in the heavenly realms…”

Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel?

Will I dance for You Jesus or in awe of you be still?

Will I stand in Your presence or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing hallelujah; will I be able to speak at all?

If we are “seated with him in the heavenly realms” we are – in the here and now – worshipping God in heaven.  If we dance for Jesus or if we are still – now – it is worship in heaven now.  Not heaven someday maybe.

We have –already – come to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.  We have come into the presence of thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of those whose names are written in heaven. (Hebrews 12: 22 -23)

So quit imagining what it might be like someday maybe…
Make it so – now.

“Making Heaven on earth is our business” – General William Booth –founder of The Salvation Army  

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[i] Bell, Rob Love Wins pg. 56 -7