Heaven on Earth.

This Summer while we were combining, Thomas, Kristen and I would read a book and then rotate it around for everyone else to read. My favorites that I got read were Sex God by Rob Bell and Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist. I'll save what I learned from Shauna another day because her book was incredible.

In Sex God, one of the main things I took from it was a comment that Rob said about bringing Heaven to Earth. So often we say "Today was hell," or "that was HELL!" We say this when we had a bad day, or when things go wrong..or to take it more literally, when we feel that the presence of God is absent.

Rob asks what about bringing Heaven to Earth...? And it hit me, there are so many amazing days where the holy spirit has been so thick during worship, or driving in my car. Or I saw something through a different set of eyes that made me finally realize what God had been trying to tell me all along and I am over joyed! How come we never say, "Wow, today heaven was on earth!"

There was a day when Kristen said it, and I couldn't agree with her more! Tom, Kristen and I were driving home from combining and there was a guy sitting on the side of the road where we take our exit into Salem. Thomas asked if we could see what he needed and give him a hand. We prayed for protection and for the words from God to be said to the guy before we stopped to help him out.

To sum up the whole story, we were able to help the young boy out the best way we could by feeding him dinner, bringing him breakfast and a sack lunch the next morning and offering him a helping hand in Salem where he could pick up his feet. He decided he wanted to keep his travels headed down South so we helped him out with a bus ticket to Eugene. We prayed and prayed for him. In the few hours we got to know him, we fell in love. It was a kind of love I had never experienced before, but saying good bye was really hard. By the end of our time with him he was smiling and laughing.

We filled out an envelope for him to write to us when he got to wherever he was headed and I prayed that somehow we impacted his life.

About 3-4 weeks after we helped him out, I got a letter in the mail that looked my hand writing on the envelope and I was so confused why my handwriting had addressed the envelope. And then I remembered!! It was JOhn, he had written to us! He was in southern California and he remembered to write to us! It was so great to hear from him. He drew a picture and sent a little snapshot of himself. I called kristen and Thomas and we were so stoked to hear back from him.

After we got to know John a bit, Kristen said "Today, heaven was on earth." And it was, somehow, God used that time. He changed me with it, and it was risky and Thomas really stepped out in faith by asking us if we minded seeing what he needed. Ill never forget John or that day. I think about him lots and I pray that I'll meet him again in heaven.

Thank you lord for bring Heaven on Earth.