Little pieces of heaven

 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. (Luke 24:50-51)

Heaven is on the veranda just outside the sliding glass door. But not just there.

Today, a familiar chair beckons as the breath of morning filters through the locust trees whose branches strain closer to the house each spring. The gentle coolness embraces arms and feet fresh from sleep and quiets the heart.

“Thank you for this little piece of heaven,” I whisper into the stillness, interrupted only by tires on Maple Avenue up the street.

Perhaps it is insensitive, utterly incongruous, to savor such consolation amid the great indecencies and anguish of our time. They are too many to number and too obvious to require naming. The slaughter of children from Ukraine to Uvalde, Texas, tops my list, all of them sacrificed to the bloody gods of ego, power and the worship of semi-automatic killing machines.

So different are the ancient words I come here to read. This day they speak of Jesus leaving his friends, carried to heaven, his hands raised in blessing. The image transports me miles and decades away to the sanctuary in which I sat from my earliest days of remembrance.

Jesus is there in a larger-than-life mural on the front wall. He rises lighter than air, surrounded by white clouds in a gilded sky, the image dripping with the sentimental romanticism of its age, yet speaking to generations of us who sat before it each week. I wonder how many of us remember it long after we left that place, even those who may have left their faith behind.

It’s his hands that most move me, raised in perpetual blessing, offering a peace that sometimes embraces the heart like a spring morning.

Every such moment is a gift of God’s own embrace, a little piece of heaven that can appear even when and where you least expect, like today, in a circle, several of them in fact, in parks and parking lots and churches in Uvalde, Texas, where grieving hearts join hands in prayer and great love, naming the One who is always there, hands still raised in blessing.

I guess he never really left.

David L. Miller