My thoughts have been on Heaven lately. My summer reading included God Is the Gospel by John Piper and Heaven On Earth by Stephen Nichols. Both books address suffering, death, and life in Heaven. Add to that the chaos, suffering, and evil in the world today, and you have a nice “I-can’t-wait-for-Heaven” cocktail for the mind. The nice umbrella suspended in the ice is the fact that Hubby’s granddaddy experienced Heaven’s welcome a couple of months ago. My mind has been on Heaven and all the people I know who are already there. It makes me long to be there even more.

Have you read about Baby Eliot? Every day that Eliot is alive is a miracle! His parents update their blog every Wednesday. You will be blessed by reading their story. Leave a “Happy Birthday” for Eliot. He’s two months old! Matt, Eliot’s father, wrote about how his longing for Heaven has grown since the birth of Eliot.

I want to share something that was in my inbox this morning. It is a devotional written by Elizabeth Elliot. She titled it “Nevertheless We Must Run Aground.” The point: God wants us to long for Him and Heaven. All the suffering and trouble on this earth serves us and is for our good because they cut our affectionate ties for this place and make us long for Jesus even more!

Have you ever put heart and soul into something, prayed over it, worked at it with a good heart because you believed it to be what God wanted, and finally seen it “run aground”?

The story of Paul’s voyage as a prisoner across the Adriatic Sea tells how an angel stood beside him and told him not to be afraid (in spite of winds of hurricane force), for God would spare his life and the lives of all with him on board ship. Paul cheered his guards and fellow passengers with that word, but added, “Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island” (Acts 27:26, NIV).

It would seem that the God who promises to spare all hands might have “done the job right,” saved the ship as well, and spared them the ignominy of having to make it to land on the flotsam and jetsam that was left. The fact is He did not, nor does He always spare us.

Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.

“Running aground,” then, is not the end of the world. But it helps to make the world a bit less appealing. It may even be God’s answer to “Lead us not into temptation”–the temptation complacently to settle for visible things.

Anyone who calls what we do on this earth “living” is deluded. All that we see and call life will be swallowed up in immortality, real life. And I should long for it more than I do. How many times does my ship have to run aground?