Eternity in our hearts

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Jesus first, humbled Himself. He descended to our earthly estate. In this "lower" life, we are all tempted constantly to live according to the flesh, tempted to base our thinking and actions only on what we can see and hear and feel and know with human senses. This is the lower estate into which Jesus came. By His obedience to the Father and His own suffering He entered into our "valley of tears." Only when we take the same position--obedience to God, patience in all the He leads us through--do we begin to "ascend" in Him. In lowliness we find our heights. Those who want to ascend to spiritual heights without passing through the valley of humility find themselves turned back. Augustine, Homilies on the Psalms:1 
 
Last night I sat outside and watched the moon come up. I was talking to my Mom on the phone. She had  been going through drawers, sorting out memories. She found many things.......read the words of my sister in law, now in Heaven, found the recording of my husband's funeral. In the remembering she went through all the emotion.....heard their voices again, felt their presence, held them close. As we talked, we felt the curtain between this life and the next lift. It didn't seem so far away.......We talked of Heaven, and I said, "Do you think that when we are all together once again there in that place, enraptured in the joy of knowing that it will never end, that we will remember this night?"
 
She said, "I don't know."
 
I think that when we are there in that place looking around at the faces, feeling the expansion of joy and love that we never dreamed possible, that maybe our minds will brush lightly against the memory of it as something we once held dear. Then we will rejoice all the more, for the absence of the sorrow we left behind.
 
"Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be filled with joy and gladness." Isaiah 35:10
Picture from public domain pictures by Barb Ver Sluis