Spring green, redbuds, dogwoods in bloom -- changing from delicate pink to gleaming white -- floating like clouds in the backdrop of the Blue Ridge and Appalachia – these are the visible worlds that enchant me once more in magical springtime.  Believers know that we live in two worlds at once – one world visible, the other world invisible, populated with neutrons and protons, angels and archangels.  What is it like to live in two worlds at once?  Recovering from his addiction to drugs and homelessness, the poet Francis Thompson, discovers the post-resurrected Jesus visible at Charing Cross and walking on the Thames:

O world invisible, we view thee,

O world intangible, we touch thee,

O world unknowable, we know thee,

Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

 Does the fish soar to find the ocean,

The eagle plunge to find the air—

That we ask of the stars in motion

If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,

And our benumbed conceiving soars!—

The drift of pinions, would we hearken,

Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places—

Turn but a stone and start a wing!

’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangéd faces,

That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)

Cry—and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder

Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,

Cry—clinging Heaven by the hems;

And lo, Christ walking on the water,

Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson, 1859–1907 –

The Kingdom of God --“IN NO STRANGE LAND” 

          

 

 

Having the ability to live in two worlds at once was a topic the Apostle Peter took up in his two little letters penned to the saints scattered throughout the Roman Empire. How desperately they needed the words he wrote to them. And how desperately the whole world needs his carefully crafted words of encouragement today! Confirming his own biography of having lived with Jesus, watched His life in closest proximity, his betrayal and denial of his Savior, and in threefold measure forgiven, Peter tells us that despite his personal experience with the supernatural love of Jesus, something of infinitely greater value are the Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah. [“ We have also a most sure word of the Prophets, to the which ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the day star arise in your heart.” 2 Peter 1:19] Why? Peter Stoner in his book, Sacred Science, counted 333 times where the Bible accurately pinpoints how Jesus alone would fulfill those prophecies.