Missing the gate of Heaven

She was peering out at me holding a steaming mug of coffee through her rain-spattered window, in her warm pajamas on a cold Sunday morning.  I'm sure she was thinking "So glad I'm not her!" as she saw me rushing to the car in my heels and dress, carrying bags and a tray stacked with covered pyrex dishes of food.  I had been up since before dawn cooking the lunch we would all share after the Sunday morning service, and I was frantically trying to make sure nothing was forgotten.  Dog was walked, dried off and fed, husband and boys fed breakfast and dressed, makeup on, earrings - check. Bag, computer, check, check.  Now we dodge freezing raindrops and cram into my son's little Chevy and off to church we go while the rest of the neighborhood seems to be in a deep sleep.  Years ago I would have looked at that woman and wished I could take her place, stay home in the warmth of my kitchen and lounge around on a Sunday morning.  But I wouldn't trade places with her for the world.

Sunday mornings, the first hours of my week - cold, warm, sunny or dark and dreary - it doesn't matter,  they're always beautiful.  I'm always reminded that Jesus came back from the dead for me that same time of day.  That's the time I want to be with Him, talk to Him, hear what He has to say to me, learn something newer and deeper and change myself for Him.  Better than Christmas morning as a child, better than the first day of summer vacation, Sunday morning is the time I hear His voice the loudest, surrounded by others who are searching for Him.  Why would I want to stay home when I could have that?

Thousands of years ago a man was running for his life.  His brother was ready to kill him for cheating and robbing him.  This man wanted God's blessings but was going about it all wrong.  But God saw that under all those deceiving and conniving ways, there was a man that valued Him.  Only God could  make sense of something so contradictory!  God loved this loser because he was a fighter.  In the middle of the night, in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but a rock for a pillow, God revealed something amazing to this man.  It was a staircase covered with angels climbing up and down from where he lay, up to heaven itself.  Then God spoke to him about his future and how He would watch over him always.  When he awoke, he said, "God was in this place and I didn't even know it!"

In the past month or two, this comment of Jacob has stayed with me daily.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and it comes to my mind.  "He's right here!" I'll think.  In the most ordinary, unimportant times and days, when we feel blah or burdened or fearful or anything that seems so far from God, He is right here and we don't even know it.  With His blazing light, with His host of angels carrying my requests to His throne, ready to reveal Himself to me, He's right there in the middle of my "wilderness."  I can access heaven right now.  Big deal, you might say, I was taught that in Sunday School, but that doesn't change the fact that my life is still so crummy. Nothing changes if you don't understand how deep this is.  Once you really know what this means, it changes EVERYTHING.

Jacob said, “What an awesome place this is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:17)  I wish more people realized just how close God is to them, just how awesome God's house is, and how every effort we make to hear and see Him is worth it.  There is so much more of the real world hidden from our eyes, that if we could only see it, we would live totally different lives.

Sure the covers are warm and soft on cold Sunday mornings, and sure a hot cuppa something nice is a wonderful thing, but what are those compared to looking into the things of heaven, wrapping my fingers around them and bringing them down into my own life?  Once you've done it, you want more, and Sunday mornings aren't even close to enough.