Jesus tells us heaven is not a place ‘up there’ in the sky, it’s wherever God’s will is done, wherever things are as God intends them to be, wherever there is love. Which means we get brief glimpses of heaven on earth! but only glimpses because here on earth lots of wills are done - yours, mine, theirs! ...

One day, Jesus tells us, earth and heaven will be one – the wonderful vision at the end of the bible in Revelation chapter 21 that ‘God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.’ Until that day, Jesus asks us to work and pray ‘Your (God’s) Kingdom come, Your (God’s) will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

‘It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on:

Festivals at which the poor man

Is king and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off, but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.’

(The priest poet, R. S. Thomas, ‘The Kingdom’)