“Like a snowy mountain peak above us,
‘Be ye perfect’ dazzles our dim eyes.
Canst thou look from thy pure height and love us?
May our earth-clogged feet to thee arise?
We before the vision veil our faces,
Yet would have it not a ray less bright;
Shine into our sin’s dark hiding places,
Flood our lives with thy transfiguring light.”
“As it is in heaven” is the standard of the doings of God’s will on earth, which the Lord’s Prayer sets for us. It is a high ideal, and yet there can be no lower. The petition is a prayer that heaven may begin in our hearts right here on the earth. Indeed, it must begin in us here or it will never begin at all for us. None can ever enter heaven save those whom heaven has first entered. Heaven only can be a wing to lift us to heaven. “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” was the Master’s own word. Every one of us goes at last “to his/her own place,” the place for which his/her character fits them. There can be no heaven for people of un-heavenly mind. It is time we had right views upon this subject. We must have the life of God in us before we are ready to dwell in blessedness with God.
A gentle author once said: “We are too much in the habit of looking forward to heaven as something that will be an easier, pleasanter story for us to read when we have finished this tiresome earth-narrative; a luxurious palace-chamber to rest in after this life’s drudgery has ended; a remote celestial mountain-retreat, where the sound of the restless waves of humanity forever fretting these shores will vex our ears no longer.”
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