Lets Crowd Heaven

Let’s make heaven crowded.

Let’s invite the kind people, the mentally ill people, the downtrodden people, the confused people, the loud people, the questioning people, the black, white, and yellow people.

Let’s invite the transgender people, and the foreign people. Let’s ask the all of the imperfect people. Lets take with us both the prostitutes and the sister-Christians.

Let’s make sure to bring the bullies and the war lords to crowd heaven too.

Let’s also ask the triumphant and the abusers, the people who hurt us, and the people who picked us back up.

Let’s make sure to invite the drug addicts and the preachers and the scientists. Let’s crowd heaven with the young, the old, the cat people of the world.

Let’s bring with us everyone who has ever disagreed with us, stood against us, and challenged us.

Let’s fill heaven to the brim with the questioning people, the curious people, the spiritually diverse people, the wandering people, the every-ends-of-the earth people.

Let’s leave nobody out.

Let’s crowd heaven.

I don’t know about your heaven, but my heaven is crowded.

It’s filled with the presence of people who serve my God and your God, people who have known God, people who are just getting to know God, and people who didn’t believe in God either, and people still questioning. It’s filled with people who know God by different names and different traditions and different practices.

Let’s crowd heaven with all of the people God loves so deeply and recklessly and intimately.

Let’s fill it with people who deserve better love than we know how to give in this life.

Let’s fill it with people whose pain God understands.

The God I serve has room for all of us to sit beside.

In this life, we are called to love one another as God has loved us. We are called to care for one another. We are called to spread the good news.

So let’s do it.

Let’s crowd heaven, and let’s not leave anyone out.

Taylor Patrice

The featured picture was taken at St. Mary’s Basilica in Krakow, Poland. It’s one of my top favorite cathedrals I have ever seen. Built in 1300, this church has survived all the wars in its life span without sustaining damage.

I stare. A lot. But the thing I have come to love staring at the most is cathedrals. They are this incredible, enduring testimony of piety and it is fascinating. Fascinating that people chiseled at rock in the name of God for centuries. And by chiseling for God, too were they sculpting our sense of heaven. May we find heaven, both in this life and the next, by spreading more love on purpose to one another.