I love when I stumble upon writers from another time who talk about turning any situation into a place of divine love, peace, joy, and even happiness. These writers bring heaven down into their circumstances. They begin to build the kingdom. This seems like ancient wisdom we’ve lost. For example, I read a letter written by Pennsylvanian and missionary Frank Laubach to his father back in 1937. He exclaims this:
“I want them to know my discovery! That any minute can be paradise, that any place can be heaven! That any man can have God! That every man does have God the moment he speaks to God, or listens for him! . . . So in this sense one man after the other builds his own heaven or his hell. It does not matter where one is, one can at once begin to build heaven, by thoughts which one thinks while in that place. . . I have learned the secret of heaven building—anywhere.”
Paul, of course, learned this secret—the secret of being content in every situation as well. For Paul, he could do “all things through Christ” who strengthened him. He also pictured himself seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2; Colossians 3). Both Paul and Laubach fixed their minds to bring heaven down, building it around them whether in prison or in a meager dwelling place on the mission field. Maybe they’d see it like this: Heaven is having God; having God is heaven. In part now; in fullness in eternity.