Experiencing Heaven on Earth

The Christian life might properly be described as a progressive entry into heaven. In other words, we don’t only experience heaven after we die. Heaven can be experienced now. The fullness of heaven, where we will be fully connected to God and to those who have loved God awaits us after we die. However, we can begin to experience this connection to God and connection to others who loved God right now.

Love is the pathway to experiencing heaven on earth. Love is the pathway for life, both here on earth, and in the life to come. We know this because God’s Son, Jesus Christ, made love central to His life and teachings. When asked about the greatest of God’s many commandments Jesus famously replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).   

Jesus didn’t only teach about love, he lived a life of love. There are many definitions of love in our culture, but when Christians speak of love they are speaking of the love that Jesus taught and lived. Jesus is the Christian definition of love. In Christ God’s love was made manifest, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). Love is a choice we make with God’s grace. Christian love does not stop when feelings of love dry up. Christian love, in other words, God’s love working through us, endures regardless of the circumstances (1 Corinthians 13:1-13).

For centuries Christians have believed that to worship is to enter into the presence of heaven. There is a sense that when we gather to encounter the Word of God in the Scripture and to take the Word of God into our lives through the Eucharist that we are stepping away from earth and into heaven itself. The Eucharist is heavenly food for our earthly pilgrimage. During worship we join “our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven” (Book of Common Prayer, 362) and with “those in every generation” (BCP, 370), both past, present, and future who have loved and worship the Triune God.  

Our earthly worship is a participation and anticipation of the worship of heaven. Having experienced and received love in worship we are then strengthened and commissioned to walk in love for the rest of our week and in the process experience heaven on earth. In some ways, the full experience of heaven after death should not be surprising for the Christian.

This is because the Christian will have spent his or her entire life seeking the country of heaven, taking short visits there, and exploring its outlying territories. Death will simply change the Christian from being a tourist of heaven, visiting occasionally, to being a resident of heaven, living there until the day of Resurrection when God will create a new heaven and a new earth.