A Taste Of Heaven

On Sunday I went to Newberg Christian Church and a friend and I were handed little pink Baskin' Robins taste tester spoons. When the sermon was told it was all about heaven and it's characteristics. The pastor began to talk about what it means to get little "tastes" of heaven: watching his sister preach to children in a third world country, watching his son by a bonfire. I left that day and didn't have much time to change and get my bike ready for a ride. I met up with an aquaintance and it turned out to be just him and I. So we took off down the highway onto a route I'd never been before. Down a country road with no shoulder, past open yellow fields, and overflowing rose gardens, past hanging hops farms, giant factories and dark skinned workers. I felt like I was in a foreign country surrounded by things I had never seen before and couldn't completely understand.

We found a clearing to the river with mexican workers playing their loud salsa music, carried our bikes down the rocky beach and leaned them up against the twigs and vines. He went and changed into a pair of shorts and I stripped down to my shorts and sports bra, and like a couple of kids from Huckleberry Finn he jumped in the river and I climbed out across a giant fallen tree to leap into the water. There was a moment in which I swam out to a thick tree limb submerged in the water, resting in the sun, and I sat down on it and let the sun warm my feet through the flowing icy water, while he was climbing around on the end of the tree trunk trying to figure out how to use it like a diving board, and I got a taste of heaven. It wasn't an "aha" moment, it wasn't filled with incomparable joy, but it was certainly freedom. There were no expectations, no anxiety, no discomfort; just the filtered sun, the chilly water, the smell of animal on the river, an adopted cousin, and beautiful moment.

We dried off in the sun and he skipped rocks while I only managed to spin them clumsitly into the water. We biked back in the baking sun, flying down the side of the road pushing ourselves hard, and making good, easy conversation. It was like a day in the Kingdom. And maybe I can imagine it someday; racing out the gates of the new Kingdom down golden side walks with a brother, finding new places, traveling great distances, pushing ourselves hard, jumping in rivers, and enjoying the never ending time.

It was a pink spoon day.

9/5/11