I admit that in the 12 years that I have been a Christian, I have burned more bridges with people than the Germans did during the Second World War.

It’s been completely my own fault: aside from Jesus, I had a functional saviour on the side that I’d been idolising. My functional saviour was friendships with others, and having a kind of ‘friendship addiction’, for want of a better expression. As I worshipped people I became too clingy with them, dumped all my burdens onto them, and cussed them out when they diddn’t want to know any more.

I can’t blame anyone for what I did, because that would be irrational and delusional. Yet, I have been trying to work towards healing with those I burned; to seek their forgiveness and be reconciled.

But it’s proving very difficult. I can’t demand or ask those whom I’ve offended to forgive me or reconcile, because that’s an issue between them and God and it’s really not my place to dictate to anyone (especially those I’ve burned) what to do. It isn’t for me to control them by guilt or anything else. I pray for reconciliation with these people but my hopes don’t hinge on it because God is my ultimate hope.

But it does beg the question of whether we want heaven on earth. Somehow the temptation for the Christian is to think that forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration of broken relationships can wait until Christ comes again to fix up all the mess. Yet, it seems to me that heaven is a place on earth, when the heavenly order is lived out in the here and now that Christians find themselves in. John 13:34-35 suggests that when Christians love one another, non-believers will taste and see the love of God.

For Christians to live out the Kingdom of God while this fallen creation is still here makes so much sense in light of the fact that the days here on earth are short. Man’s life, for King Solomon, is a vapour that comes and goes so fast that hardly anyone remembers it once it’s gone. So, then, why not live out the Kingdom while the days are short? If you’re about to die tomorrow, why not forgive that brother who’s offended you and live out the Kingdom so that when you die and find yourself in paradise, it’s not a big shock? It would be the ultimate fulfillment of what you were already doing on earth.

I dont write this to guilt people into doing what God asks of them - just to pose the questions as to why heaven can’t be lived out right here and now. What are we waiting for? If we don’t live heaven here now are we really that different to the world?