Between Edens

I think we’re all kind of longing for heaven like I’m longing for Los Angeles, though most of us really don’t know it yet.

It’s been years since I’ve read Grapes of Wrath, one of the most bleak but beautiful novels in American literature. Last week, roaming the aisles of my local used bookstore, I found a worn copy of East of Eden, another Steinbeck masterpiece, and evaluated whether I was emotionally stable enough to give it a try. The evaluation is yet to be determined, but I bought it anyway. The first chapter, describing the vistas of Salinas Valley, is exquisite and made me long for California again. I haven’t been able to pick it up since. My heart aches too much to read it.

Sometimes I’ll be watching some show filmed in L.A. and have a flashback of walking in an alley in Koreatown under a parade of red paper lanterns; Or brushing my hand with the orange petals along the Silverlake Reservoir trail; Or even the frantic whirring of a police helicopter above my apartment complex. All these sensory images have a kind of magnetic, sorrowful, pull.

Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

I have found myself in some strange holding pattern in the state I least like to visit, let alone live (Arkansas), and I wish I could crawl into the trunk of those Okies from Grapes, and make my way back to the place that feels much more like home than Arkansas ever did. You know, without all the poverty and starvation, that is.

When you feel disoriented and out of place, how do you find peace? When we find ourselves somehow suspended between seasons, it’s easy to spiritualize it and conjure some cliche phrase that will give us a temporary “pat on the head.”

This is only a season.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

When God closes a door, He opens a window.

Whether we like it or not, we live in the world, with all the trappings of it: the lust for power and greed, the striving to be the most accomplished, the constant affirmation of an identity apart from what we were actually created for. Some like to pretend they live in a liminal spiritual place that looks more like heaven, but I don’t think even Jesus called us to live there. At least not fully.

Because He put us in the world for a reason. He’s even put me in Arkansas for a reason, though I can’t yet figure out why.

I keep thinking about a parable of Jesus I read today in the Gospel of Mark:

“The coming of the Son of Man can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. When he left home, he gave each of his slaves instructions about the work they were to do, and he told the gatekeeper to watch for his return. You, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know when the master of the household will return—in the evening, at midnight, before dawn, or at daybreak. Don’t let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning. I say to you what I say to everyone: Watch for Him!" (Mark 13:24-27)

I think we’re all kind of longing for heaven like I’m longing for Los Angeles, though most of us really don’t know it yet. In the meantime, he’s asking us to create, to influence, to build, and to plan—to season with salt the world around us. So even in Arkansas, what is He asking me to anchor myself to? What are the little places he’s called me to enjoy and be present in?

Because I’m here now. We’re all here on the earth now. And friends, I think His arrival is imminent, so are we following His instructions in the place that He’s put us?