Aiming at Heaven | Kiersti Giron

I was a teen when I first heard it, that C.S. Lewis quote our pastor mentioned one Sunday morning in northwest New Mexico—that aiming at heaven would get you earth thrown in, but aiming at earth would get you neither. I wrote it in my journal, the little notebook covered with dark blue fabric printed with red apples, now packed in a box somewhere in our garage.

A few days ago, I realized I’d been doing it—aiming at earth, that is.

It’s been rather a post-mountaintop couple of weeks since our production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat closed, and it’s been a little hard to adjust after the amazing experience and close cast bonding that it was. One morning, I woke again feeling so adrift and unsatisfied, and wondered in prayer what was wrong with me—it seemed like more was going on than just post-show blues, and I’d truly been trying to get past those.

There, I realized, lay the problem. I’d been focused on trying to find the next thing, finding ways to keep myself occupied and fulfilled—planning a writing workshop to teach for teens, working on my own manuscripts neglected during the show, getting more settled into our new house, looking ahead to the fall, arranging a movie and Jamba Juice date with my sister, planning fun and creative summer meals. All of it good, but none of it satisfying.

It wasn’t till that morning that I realized why. I was aiming at earth. And nothing earthly, however good and created-by-God it is, can satisfy me by its own merits.

Maybe partly why Josephwas so hard to let go was that, despite the ever-present challenges along the way, it was a little taste of heaven. A group of people bonded together by Jesus, loving each other and working together on a common goal—to honor Him. And so knowing incredible joy.

And that is the only way I will find satisfaction and fulfillment anywhere or at anytime—doing things on earth aimed at heaven. Looking for and keeping my focus on what is lasting, whether I’m writing or tutoring or watching a movie. Looking not at what is seen, but what is unseen.

It comforted me, to realize that what really mattered about our production of Joseph—the things that were unseen—are not really over. And those that were temporal could never last anyway.

Today I got a letter from the Center for Mission Mobilization in Fayetteville, AK, where I friend and missionary I support is on staff. In it the director shared some insights he had recently received through the book The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn. Several points stood out to me, especially in light of what I’ve been thinking lately—that my heart will always go where I put God’s money, that we should live not for the dot of “now” but for the line of eternity, and that giving is the only antidote to materialism.

The letter closed by challenging readers, as Alcorn does, to think not thirty years ahead, as financial planners encourage, but of how what we do today will pan out thirty millionyears from now…and in heaven, when we receive our “final giving receipt” from the Lord.

Made me think.

I want to live aiming at heaven. I’m learning it’s the only way to truly enjoy God’s good gifts on earth…and when things aren’t easy, or fair, or just-seeming here, that perspective can help us to hang on.

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” ~II Corinthians 4:16-18

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