By Ariel Merivil
Our songs have the power to shape what we believe and know about God, yet I often wonder how often we think critically about what we’re singing. Today’s anthem text, “Unclouded Day” by Josiah Kelley Alwood, a circuit-rider preacher from Ohio, is like many texts we’ve sung before about heaven. As people of faith, we live with the hope that one day we will reach a promised land, a place where we believe God resides and where many of our loved ones already are.
O, they tell me of a home far beyond the skies,
O they tell me of a home far away;
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.
In spite of what you may believe about heaven, where it is, how or when we get there and who might be there, one thing is sure: it is a destination whose imagery has enticed and captivated our imagination for generations. Whatever draws us to it, whether fear of the alternative or hope of reunion, heaven has always been something we reach toward.
In our imagining of heaven, I wonder if we at times forget that God has called us to create a kin-dom of peace, justice and love here on earth. In longing for a home beyond the sky, have we forgotten our role to create a place of healing and welcome here on earth?
Each week, we corporately pray the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6. In it, we pray something like this:
Our God in heaven, holy is your name,
May your kingdom come, and your will be done,
On earth, as it already is in heaven.
In this prayer, we ask God to do in us what God has already done for us, to fulfill through us what God has already provisioned for us. It doesn’t take much from the news cycle to recall the discord and turmoil that surround us. We are no strangers to a need for sanctuary, safety, justice, healing and reconciliation. These are the attributes of heaven. And God has already given us what we need to begin creating these spaces on this corner and throughout the intersections of our life together.
In our opening hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” we pray that God be for us all the things we are not: wisdom, truth, light and constant presence. The text presumes that the God of all things is also the God who has given us all things. So go out and be the people God has shaped, and carry into the world spaces of justice, peace, sanctuary and love. Amen.