Reality

There seems to have been a lot of words and ideas I've butted up against lately dealing with reality. It all started with her talk a few weeks ago and has been followed up by several novels and essays I've consumed over the past two weeks.

I think that we are fogged up about the idea of what "real" is. Reality seems to have dominion over the tangible, the physical, the stuff you can see, smell, touch, taste, hear. But I argue that there is such a reality that we miss out on by becoming detached from ourselves, and therefore, from reality.

All this leads me to the conclusion that the ultimate reality is God. If you say His name five or six times in the silence of your own room, by the time the last utterance leaves your lips and a hush falls over the space, descending from ceiling to floor, you feel the weight of it rush in, like your very being is sucking the contents of the air inward, and the stillness witnesses that He is real. He is supreme. He is our Father.

I'm finding that he was a very wise man. In this book he describes Heaven as being so real that those walking on its footpaths feel like they're walking on glass. The people traveling to it aren't tangible beings until they accept for themselves all the reality that Heaven has to offer.

We are prone to believe that we've got a pretty good handle on reality. We think we know what real love is or real happiness. We assume we understand real humility or real charity possibly even real discipleship. But I firmly believe that we have no idea. Our sense of reality is so finite, bounded, and mortal I think that if we understood the magnitude of what we have the potential to feel and experience, we would straighten up immediately to assure our inclusion in the pure, real and lasting ecstasy that is provided for us. (But if we take a moment to reflect on the creatures we really are, we soon realize that none of us, with all our merits, repentance or charity would qualify without the unimaginable mercy of a loving Heavenly Father).

I wake up and don my reality glasses each morning, but I'm finding that far too often, the lenses get clouded and I fall asleep at night needing a renewed perspective.