how far heaven is away…

we have been looking in the LORD’s prayer at the first question that comes to mind which is who do we prayer to?  and the answer is our FATHER.  then another question comes up, where is HE?  and the answer is in heaven.  matthew 6.9 (niv), …our FATHER in heaven…

let me ask you a question.  how far away is heaven?  is it farther than the moon?   how many miles from here is heaven?   farther than new york city?  about the same distance?

we have this problem that we tend to think of heaven as someplace way out there in outer space. and as a result of this kind of thinking, GOD becomes remote, distant, and hard to access. therefore we feel as if we’re alone much of the time, and we’ll express that in odd ways.

people will sometimes say at the beginning of a worship service, “GOD, today as we come into your presence…”  and i imagine GOD saying, “where do you think you’ve been?”  lo, i am with you always, JESUS said, to the ends of the earth. and there’s no limits to that.

there was this lady who had a flying phobia.  she’d had a trauma when she was younger so she came to talk to john ortberg about it one time, and he referred her to somebody that could help with phobic disorders because there’s a lot that can be done with that emotionally.

but because she was a CHRISTian, he also said, “from a spiritual point of view, JESUS did say, ‘I am with you always.’”  this actually happened. she said, “no, JESUS said, ‘lo, I am with you always.’” she thought that meant l-o-w.  but it was “lo l-o I am with you always”  it has no limits.

i want to take just a moment to tell you about the grammar in this part of the prayer where it says, our FATHER in heaven. the greek word for heaven is “uranos.”  we get the word for our planet uranus from that word.  but here in the LORD’s prayer, it’s actually in the plural form. literally the prayer goes, “our FATHER, the ONE in the heavens.”

now the word heavens in the new testament is used in a variety of ways.  it’s used for the atmosphere.  it’s used for the sky that you look at.  it’s also used for the air – the stuff that we breathe, for what’s right around us.  it’s that close.  sometimes we talk about something that appears out of thin air.  it’s right at hand.

just a thought from the front porch…