Can Eternity Meet Earth?

Can eternity meet the earth? I’m on the Pacific coast, looking across a foggy horizon as frothing waves crash on stubbornly immovable rocks. A longer look finds seagulls, cormorants, pelicans, terns, lone herons, and an occasional sea lion. Kelp forests make a home for innumerable fish. On shore something like a miniature forest grows within the zone between high and low tides. Above it plants flourish as close as they dare to approach the water. The shoreline is a narrow ecosystem where land meets sea with a profusion of life.

The ocean has always seemed to me like the heart and voice of God. It is vast, like eternity. Unlike the sea, the earth on which we live is far more under our control.

This physical world seems a tangible expression of the spiritual. Spiritual life flourishes where earth meets eternity, where we as humans in our regulated world approach the mysteries of God and eternity that splash upon us.

To engage in that shoreline of the Kingdom of God come to earth, we think and act by faith. We risk and step out beyond our controlled lives and systems.

We find we must also part with things like doubt and complacency to enter and experience the flourishing spiritual life in the zone where heaven meets earth. Understandably, many people do not.

This is where God’s Word and Spirit come powerfully alive in our lives, where God actually does what Scripture says he’ll do, and where his Spirit actually does supernatural works. Not always, and not in ways we necessarily expect. We do have disappointments. That is part of the mystery and part of yielding to the presence of God’s ocean wherever it meets us in this life.

To those who abstain, little will convince them; to those who step in, little can ever turn them back.

The shoreline of God’s Kingdom awaits you—every day. Step in with me.