Sometimes I feel like I’m in heaven now. It comes in small doses: a tender kiss from my wife, a rapturous laugh with my whole family, a soft and pillowy snowfall, a moment of epiphany. Time stands still and you catch a glimpse – if only for a moment – of what it is like to be in wonder. It’s hard to believe it’s happening when it happens. Heaven is never what you thought or hoped it was going to be. It catches you by surprise.

Jesus said, “the Kingdom has come near/is at hand,” but we still believe heaven is out there and in the future – some distant utopia to which you eventually escape, if you are lucky. In that way of seeing things, this world is disposable. Good invades to a limited degree, but it mostly exists somewhere else. Abort mission and look forward to the next life – when life really begins.

Yes, it is hard to believe we are in heaven now when the world around us seems so much like hell. People are in abject terror and torture. That can’t possibly be heaven. That is why any true view of reality must have some way of dealing with the tragedies a human soul can experience in this life. You’re in luck: the only real way to get to heaven is to go through hell. When you have traveled through that darkness, then and only then do you understand the vastness of heaven and the depths to which it can reach. I don’t want a heaven that isn’t able to encompass hell.

Heaven then is not just the absence of pain and suffering. It is the culmination and the redemption of all pain and suffering. It’s our job to make that come about. When you experience these little moments of joy and wonder, you become a carrier, a secret emissary, sent to bring about heaven for someone else. Nothing is lost or wasted. Everything is redeemed. All of human consciousness and the physical world are evolving to that end. At some points, if only for a moment, you can taste it.