Things Unseen

Monday or Tuesday afternoon I finished a book by one of my favorite authors. "Things Unseen: Living in Light of Forever" by Mark Buchanan. The book is basically about becoming heavenly-minded and not only or always thinking of things on this earth. I want to quickly share with you very few of the profound quotes that I've read in this book!

"Our deepest instinct is Heaven. Heaven is the ache in our bones, the splinter in our heart. Like the whisper of faraway waves we hear crashing in the whorls of a conch shell, the music of Heaven echoes, faint, elusive, haunting, beneath and within our daily rutines. There you are, standing at a window watching oak leaves flutter down from dark boughs, and without a warning your whole body fills with a longing for something you can't name, something you've lost but never had, that you're nostalgic for yet don't remember. You sense a joy so huge it breaks you, a sorry so deep it cleanses."

(Buchanan quoting C.S. Lewis)
"If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who though most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were OCCUPIED WITH HEAVEN. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."

"Take captive literally means to take prisoner. We take prisnor, he says, (referring to Paul) anything that tries to take us prisoner."

"God is proud to be the God of the Heavenly-minded."

The day I finished reading this book I talked to a friend of mine on the phone and we got to talking about this book and he said: "The book sounds good, but, does it only talk about being Heavenly-minded? Does it over emphasize being Heavenly-minded that it isn't telling you how to be both? Does it tell you how to be earthly-minded and yet Heavenly-minded? Because if you're only one then that's not good either."

That last quote that I shared with you made me think of a question and something I've been wondering since I've finished this book. This book mainly states how we become Heavenly-minded, which is the very first place to begin. But now my question is: how do we balance being Heavenly-minded and thinking upon things of this earth? Do they go hand-in-hand? If you have any thoughts please do share them with me. I'm not looking for a specific answer, only your thoughts.

Blessings....
Teresa