There is a fullness to life that defies all our attempts to fill it. It is already full!

Usually, if you read something like this, you assume that the writer has relinquished all desire, made compromises with life, succumbing to a cop-out: “Life’s already full anyway.” It can be an excuse to give up on your dreams.

But what if the fullness I’m talking about is big enough and rich enough to fulfill all your deepest desires too? Wouldn’t that be awesome? What if life was already so full that it was like living in a garden full of trees bearing the most wonderful delights you could imagine? This sounds like a fairy tale, a pipe dream, wishful thinking. But what if it wasn’t? What if we already lived in the garden and had somehow come to deceive ourselves that there is no garden? How would that even be possible? Well, we’d basically have to be sleepwalking through life.

Imagine being in the most wonderful place ever, surrounded by beauty and love—everything sparkling with vibrant color. Wouldn’t it be horrible if, by some strange accident, you began to lose touch with the world around you, instead choosing to make your own private hell? With lack of exercise, entire sensory systems would atrophy, and you’d lose access to the world of beauty in which you lived—even though you never actually left! What a horrible tragedy that would be!

This, my friends, is the human condition. Yes, it’s a tragedy, but it’s also the best news in the world. It means that, in reality, you lack nothing. It means that, in reality, you are already in heaven, and there is no great gulf that you must cross. It means that, through faith and the cultivation of your lost senses, you can learn to open your spiritual eyes and wake up to the world in which you already live.

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.'” — Luke 15:31