Lilacs, Less Than, Greater Than

Last week I passed my lilac bush and pulled down a cluster of these beautiful, purple blossoms that are such harbingers of spring and breathed in the deeply pungent aroma. The smell of lilacs has got to be the most primal of pleasant nature aromas going far back into my toddlerhood.

The smell is so deeply embedded in my brain that just one deep inhalation leaves me reeling in some wonderful way with the perfection of the scent. It is aromatically intoxicating.

After I breathed in this wonderful aroma and thought to myself how perfect…how absolutely, heavenly perfect is the scent of the lilac…I recalled a strange article I read when I was in my early twenties.

Back then, the Reader’s Digest was popular bedtime/bathroom reading and somehow we had a subscription. There was an article in one of these editions I will always remember from time to time, simply for the confident ideas of the writer and my perceived illogic of it all.

It was an article about heaven. And this writer asserted that because heaven was perfect in every way, that in heaven only the most perfect from each thing in creation existed. The writer stated that in heaven, there will be one, singular perfect flower; one singular, perfect song; one singular, perfect tree; for example.

Since this singular, perfected flower is so absolutely perfect, we cannot even conceive of it. When we see it (according to this writer) it will be a bloom that we will recognize as the epitome of all flowers, and there will exist no other flower except this one.

Now, it’s been nearly forty years since I read that person’s thoughts and imaginings of what heaven will be like and I’m likely inserting my own reaction, in part, into the wording. But truly, the part about there only being one singular type of flower in heaven–that is what was said!

I just found the concept not only odd, but, revolting!

I think it is human nature to wonder what heaven might be like and each soul has its own sets of questions, imaginings, hopes and fears, I suppose. Since the kingdom of heaven is often spoken of, biblically, in parable and metaphor, God seems to leave us with healthy amounts of holy mysteries about the great beyond.

At some point in my younger years I had this image in my mind of being eternally frozen in time…suspended in some heavenly song…a kind of disconnected image of some condition so foreign as to be frightening, in some sense. Isolatated, alone…almost some disembodiment in some realm that one could not imagine as being anything one is familiar with one earth. Some type of nebulous outer space, I suppose.

I remember when my father died, my immediate thoughts and emotions for weeks and weeks and months and beyond…involved wondering if he could see me from heaven. It’s a lot for a young, sixteen year old (or any age) to wonder where a deceased parent exists; the sudden absence of a very real and present human being leaves us still thinking of them as though they were present.

And it was my father that I recall taking me outdoors as a young child and smelling lilacs with me. The power of scent can be surprisingly strong and connected to powerful memories.

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Much as I adore lilacs, I surely hope that in the eternal kingdom of God are endless discoveries and experiences with flowers of all sorts. Surely, the gardens in the eternal, heavenly Eden must have more to explore than one boring flower!

I imagine endless forms of beauty of many sorts to marvel at and experience as opened to us, rather than some diminishment of the earthly realm. Yes, it’s all subjective in our imaginations but I hold on to the hope that scripture gives as a simple idea and glimpse: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— (2 Corinthians 2:9)

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of the unknown. We came into existence without our permission or sayso about a number of things, and when we leave this life, whatever lies beyond will be what it is, without our permission or input.

And that is where I use my God-given brain and logic. Why would God make such diversity and such wonder and beauty in this earth, only for heaven to be some truncated experience rather than expansive beyond words, in every way possible?

Perhaps the Reader’s Digest writer was hoping to articulate the same things, but it came across to me as less than.

Which brought me to thoughts last week with the lilacs about greater thans and less thans.

There are various scriptures about that which is greater and that which is lesser; that which should be made greater and that which should be made lesser. And of course, that which is equal. Jesus said that to see Him is to see the Father, and that He and the Father are one.

I don’t want to find/cite scripture references but just invite thought about all the deeper things beyond simple math terms (greater/lesser symbols and such) regarding the kingdom of God, and of life and the world. My thoughts include the human propensity to feel less than, at times. And of course the human desire to want something more than.

We want more than bare survival. The human soul wants to thrive. We long for the abundant life that is found in God, and when it feels less than, the human soul keeps reaching for more. And sorrow may come when we feel we are either not enough…or…we are too much.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”

Ephesians 3:20