Heavens | Wayfarer

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Ephesians 1:3 (NIV)

Earlier this week I was reading about new discoveries in the scientific community relating to physics. Wendy and I have enjoyed long conversations through the years about our faith and science. I credit Wendy with introducing me to the writings and works of Madeleine L’Engle, whose fiction and non-fiction writings both explore the intersection of these two disciplines which have famously warred with one another through the centuries. Wendy and I don’t feel tremendous conflict between the two. Faith that denies science is foolish, as is science that denies its inherent faith. For Wendy and me, our creative imaginations find all sorts of fascinating correlations that complement both.

What I read earlier this week dealt with the theory of relativity and time. It explored the idea of parallel realities and time existing in different dimensions. The possibilities are mind blowing, and it makes me shake my head in gleeful wonder. Despite all that we’ve learned throughout history, I sense that we have only scratched the surface of the depth and complexity that our Creator wove into all creation. As for things existing at once in different dimensions, that’s already hinted at in God’s story.

The verse above from Paul’s letter to the Jesus followers in Ephesus is one of my favorites to chew on in the same vein with which I chew on my rudimentary understanding of relativity and quantum theory. We live on this earth in the moment, our lives bound by the realities of flawed humanity, sickness, conflict, tragedy, and monotony. At the same moment, according to this verse, we have been (past tense) blessed in heavenly realms (is this what science would call another dimension in another or outside of our present time?) with every spiritual blessing in Christ. We exist simultaneously in different realities, bound in earthly time and blessed in spiritual eternity. Talk about mind blowing.

Today, as I write this, we are celebrating Good Friday when Jesus was beaten and crucified. For those of faith, we believe that on the cross and in the empty tomb that was to follow on Sunday morning, there was a fundamental shift in both the earthly and spiritual dimensions which forever altered our present earthly reality and the reality of our standing in the spiritual dimension/realm that exists beyond time. While I do not claim to understand it all, I have faith in the glimpse of it I have been given, and once again I shake my head in the wonder of it all.