letters to surfers

Heaven is immediately accessible

Answer by Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca) November 2000

I very much liked your comment that: "My belief is that I pray to a God who is immediately accessible even to being in the same geographical location. God is around us and in some mysterious way within us. Because of the limitations of my "human" senses I can not see God, but God not having my carnal limitations can not only see me but knows my very thoughts. (My hearing is limited to 20 - 18000 cps., my sight is limited to the red / violet range of the colour spectrum, my touch and taste to my physical condition, etc.) God does not have such limitations. This belief not only puts me "spiritually" closer to the source of all life but it puts God's awesome power in some sort of perspective for me."

When a student asked me where God was, I once said that right there in the room about twenty different television programs were going on (that was before cable), and you could pick them out of nowhere if you had the right antenna on your house and a TV monitor. Those programs were accessible all around, and in everything, without having a particular location. If you moved across the city they were still there. I think the problem with that answer was that the TV programs were still part of the physical world, and they could be reduced to the dimensions of space and time.

We need to picture heaven, not as another TV program, but as a quite different way of being present with and interacting with God the Creator of our universe. I think you have captured this experience exactly with the words "spiritually closer to the source of all life." I talk about experiencing God as three Persons. I talk to God like a parent above me, God like a friend beside me, and God inspiring me from the depths of my being. And I can do that anywhere, anytime. When I die I imagine the conversation can go on but without all the confusions, distractions, and pain of the world around me now for the present.


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