I read a story about a wise man (how come these stories always feature a “wise man” and not a wise woman? Never mind!) Anyway, the man had a dream that he got to heaven and was very disappointed. All he saw were other wise men studying around a table.
Oh, I’d be disappointed, too if that was heaven. But the message was this: It isn’t that the wise men were in paradise. Paradise is in the wise men.”
We have a chance to make our lives heaven or hell. We can find something—one little thing—to do to make our situation a bit better.
The same is true about hell. Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski was asked, what’s the difference between a religious person and a spiritual one?
A religious person is afraid of going to hell. A spiritual person has already been there.
Rabbi Twerski heard a woman once tell this story, “I am a football fan, a rabid Jets fan. I’ll never miss watching a Jets game. One weekend I had to be away, so I asked a friend to record the game on her VCR. When I returned, she handed me the tape and said, ‘By the way, the Jets won.’
“I started watching the tape, and it was just horrible! The Jets were being mauled. At half-time they were behind by twenty points. Under other circumstances, I would have been a nervous wreck. I would have been pacing the floor and hitting the refrigerator. But I was perfectly calm, because I knew they were going to win.
We don’t know what will happen. But we can trust that things will turn out OK.”
Life is a journey between two forevers. We can decide to do one little thing today that helps us find a bit of heaven. Like Ted Danson on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — Everything’s “heaven” with him. The comment if he had a piece of gum, “I’m in heaven.”
