It is recorded in Luke 17.20-21, that when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God would come, he replied that one cannot tell its advent by observation, so as to point directly to it. In fact the kingdom of God is within, or among, us all now. The choice of prepositions offers alternate sides of the same coin, for the kingdom is both a part of our spiritual essence and a state of communal, eventually world-wide, harmony among the various forces of humanity that are usually in destructive conflict. In his day Jesus could mediate that kingdom to all who would receive him. Thus he instructed the twelve disciples to proclaim the message, "The kingdom of Heaven is upon you", when he sent them forth on their preliminary missionary journey. A proof of the reality of this kingdom was to be their healing work among the sick, the lepers, the dead and those infested by evil spirits (Matt. 10.7-8).

Heaven is a state of inner wholeness. When one is in heaven, one is completely and unashamedly oneself, open to the glory of the world around one, and as transparent in one's simplicity as others are transparent in their innate goodness. There is a spark of nobility in even the most degraded person, and when we know the heavenly light, we evoke the best from all those around us. So it was with the heavenly man Jesus: when people were with him they no longer needed to justify themselves, for there was no longer any judgement against them. The love of God flowed through him to them, and they were suddenly liberated from their past restrictions that prevented them from being open to the world in the present moment.

It is, however, a hard thing to bear the full power of love. Love divests us of all previous illusions of importance, power and prestige. It cuts us down to size in order to raise us up to the divine image in which we were originally created. This is a state of being in which we may know God in mystical union, and work towards the coming of his kingdom by the full use of our body, mind and soul. Ceasing to be powerful in our own right, we become the vehicles of the divine power.

And we are put on earth a little space,
that we may learn to bear the beams of love.

So wrote William Blake in "The Little Black Boy".

It must be said in all honesty that not everyone responds to God's love in this way; free- will remains inviolate, and we can reject that love as the religious leaders of Christ's day rejected the love that he beamed on the world. Why did they reject Christ's love? Because they were self-sufficient and could not tolerate the suggestion that they needed the help of anyone else. Furthermore, in the face of heaven we see ourselves very clearly. This is why it is so hard to bear the beams of love: our pride responds by inflating itself to unseemly proportions, and until it is deflated by a fall, it will exclude any assistance from outside. The very pious type of individual is sometimes so bewitched by his or her own impeccable rectitude that any suggestion of fallibility is a dire threat to the self-imposed image, which the person will fight to the death to preserve. And so it may come about that a traditional religious type of heaven imprisons its devotees in hell, whereas the penitent sinner that we all are in our better moments is firmly at home in a heaven that excludes nobody except by the person's own choice. "Thou wast with me, and I was not with thee", wrote St Augustine in his Confessions. Indeed, God is always with us, and when we are quiet at the end of a day's busy, and often frustrating, work the divine presence is at last allowed to beam love into our tired souls.

I thank you, Lord, for your unceasing presence in your creation. May I attain that quiet attention to the present moment by which to know you and to serve you best.