Who can even imagine Heaven?  The best we can hope for is a good analogy, so how about this:  Heaven is like a musical composition.  If you try to write it all down, capturing every instrument’s part and every nuance of musical dynamics, the end result looks endlessly complex–you see a lot of pieces, but you lose sight of the whole.  But when you hear the piece actually played as a single composition, it’s unified, seamless, an immersion in beauty.

We’re so blinded by the world we do know, we cannot even conceive of Heaven—and yet when we pray for God’s will to be done on Earth, we ask for it to be modeled upon what exists in a realm we cannot even imagine—now that’s boldness!  As the Apostle Paul wrote: “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

So we may not be able to pray with precise words for God’s will to be done “as it is in Heaven,” but we can rely on the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us, to intercede with us and to speak through us, so we listen in on the music of Heaven instead of getting lost in the individual pieces.

AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

This very moment You reign supreme—over the angels in heaven, over the sun, moon and stars, and over this Earth.  You reign, indeed, over all You have made.  But in the heavens Your rule is established in all its fullness.  You reign in the eternal present where nothing is past, nothing is yet to be, but all simply is, and is as it ought to be.  That rule, that reign, is the deepest longing of our hearts, and we yearn for it to be established among us even now.  May we be emissaries of this Kingdom and act for its fulfillment.  Give us a vision of Your kingdom as it is so that we may surrender our goals and aspirations to Yours.  May You be our vision of all that can, should, and ought to be.  Let Your glory reside in and emanate from all You have made.  And as Your glory fills us, and all of Creation round about us, may we be transformed as we wait for the Day on which You will return to us.  Correct and train all our imaginings.  Fill our hearts and minds not only with the vision of Your kingdom established among us, but with longing for it as well, so that our wills may be joined to Yours.  Raise us up to You as You indwell us.  Grant that our imaginings and longings will be loftier, nobler and holier than they could otherwise be.  Transport us into the heavenly realms so that, descending to the here and now, we may, like Moses, bear the light of glory on our faces and live in such a way that Your heavenly kingdom be established here on Earth just as it is in Heaven.