Beautiful Dream

I had a very impacting dream last night. Tam and I were on some trip or something. We got out of the car and saw before us the most beautiful place I had ever been. It is hard to describe because the power and beauty of the place came more from the emotion of it rather than just the scenery. The sight however, was incredible. It was akin to a tiny village in the Swiss Alps. The background setting was like spring snowcapped mountains or something of that genre. In the foreground were these house-like places. I remember seeing them and just weeping because they felt so warm. They were the most inviting structures (for lack of a better word) that I had ever laid eyes on. As I walked passed there was a single sentiment that I remembered feeling….

“I’ve been here before.”

I kept saying it over and over because I had a lack of words for the feeling. I couldn’t understand why the place was so familiar, why those quaint beautiful homes or buildings were hidden deep within my heart. My brain was telling me this was the first time I had seen them, but my emotions were saying, “Welcome to the place you have always known.”

I hope, I dream, I believe that heaven will be like this. Not some crazy cloud-like strange world that makes us feel alienated and miss being back on earth. I dream that heaven will be a place that is already in our hearts, that we are somehow strangely familiar with. And when we get there, we will just say, “I have been here before.”

C.S Lewis’s poem called The Future of Forestry ends with this line:

So shall a homeless time, though dimly
Catch from afar (for soul is watchful)
A sight of tree-delighted Eden.

Although we have never been to Eden, we have eden-like notions built deep within us. What we know within our souls…what is sublimely good, pure and perfect. In this “homeless time” as we wander through this first life, we still have a dim notion or glimpse of heaven. This is what we long for, this is what pines as deep cries out to deep.

God, may our glimpses of “home” draw nearer as we live and long for You today.