Appetizers

For the foodie in you, just know that this post is sooooo not what you're expecting.  The foodie in me feels obliged to say that up front.

I've heard it said that some of the eternal world (i.e. heaven and hell) can be experienced here on earth.  Not in full, of course, but sort of in appetizer form.  As in, here's a taste of what's to come.  We're given only the most fleeting taste, designed to arouse our appetite and expectation of the full course.

As applied to heaven and hell, none of us know what to expect from personal experience.  We haven't gone on and seen for ourselves.  But I'm starting to take it on faith that this appetizer notion is true.  One of my favorite verses of the Bible is James 1:17 which says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."  I'm no Biblical scholar and I can't point to the original Greek, Hebrew, etc.  But in my modern reading of this, "good and perfect gift" means...good and perfect gift.  And to me, that means something like:

• sharing a laugh (or a cry) with a friend
• a glass of wine and a nap
• being in the middle of a good book, knowing I have miles to go before I sleep
• traveling
• loving on animals
• watching my friends grow their families (which feels like they're growing mine as well)

You get the idea.  I think those things that are good and perfect to me - and I don't mean this in a morally relativistic kind of way - are literal appetizers from heaven.  That laugh with my peep?  A preview of the eternal joy and happiness and complete perfection that is to come.  A glass of wine and a nap?  Just a dark hint of the pure relaxation and fulfillment of spending eternity with God and HIS peeps.  Who will be my peeps.  Heck, who already are my peeps; I just don't know them yet.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think we indulge ourselves regularly on Hell's buffet line.  There is a girl who hates me.  Actively.  She relishes in my mistakes and sets up hurdles, cackling and rubbing her hands together when I stumble.  Her hatred is intoxicating and before I know what I've done, I find myself at that buffet line, plate filled high with liquid carrots, wilted lettuce, rotten eggs.  My chin is wet and my hands are greasy. 

I've thought of punishment for sins as something in the future - not currently realized, but something that will manifest later.  And to a certain extent, this is true.  There are future rewards and punishments, both in earthly consequences of our actions and in eternal ones as well.  But there are current appetizers of those here, too.  In her hatred for me, this girl isn't just heading toward a hell of isolation and suffering, she's already there.  While setting traps for me, she's really wrapping that noose, that snare, tighter and tighter around herself.  She's living in the suffering caused by her own evil.

And when I hate her back, I do the same thing. 

Just food for thought.  Pun intended.  :)