Exploring My Strange Bible - Prayer and Paradise

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Prayer and encountering God’s presence are biblical topics we can study, but they’re also very personal experiences for each of us, and so this message combines both. First, Tim shares his personal history with prayer, and then dives into a biblical study of God’s Eden paradise appearing where we least expect it. Tying these two parts together is a personal parable involving a wild huckleberry field on a remote mountainside. Tim gave this message at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Ore., on October 19, 2022. REFERENCED RESOURCES Check out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here. SHOW MUSIC “Nob Hill (Instrumental)” by Drexler SHOW CREDITS Production of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Aaron Olsen edited and remastered today's episode. JB Witty writes our show notes. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can all be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. Hey, everybody. How are you guys? Good. Good. Me too, I think. I've been working by myself in a room all day, so this is a real shift from where I was a couple hours ago.

It was a great day. Thank you for asking. But I think this is going to be a special evening too, and I'm not quite sure what's in store. I mean, I have some things I'm going to say. I had to plan that. But I'm not quite sure where this train is going to end tonight, and I think that's a good thing.

I have been asked, invited to weave together two themes that have to do one with the Bible and one with prayer tonight. And when it comes to the Bible, I feel very comfortable. I'm a Bible nerd by profession, aka a Bible scholar, but that sounds kind of stuffy to me. but, you know, I get to spend my days studying and researching the Bible and where it came from and what it's saying, and I have a fair amount of experience in talking about the Bible when the topic of the Bible comes up. But that's not the only thing that I've been invited here to share about. I've also been invited to contribute to this series about prayer,

which is not just important in the life of the church, though that's true, but it's like super important and a centralizing, vitalizing theme in our church community right now. Yes? Yes? So I feel less confident when it comes to talking about prayer.

And it's not because I don't think I can say something about it, but it's because prayer inspires feelings in me that are really different than the feelings of when the topic of the Bible comes up. So to be perfectly honest, prayer makes me feel things like intimidation because it's been a part of my journey of following Jesus that has felt like the most deficient and the most work with not quite sure that I'm doing it right

or connecting to something that is really what's like possible or potential. prayer is a topic that makes me feel a certain degree of guilt or shame because I feel like I ought to be having some kind of experience that I hear people talk about and it just for decades of my journey of following Jesus hasn't been that kind of experience for me. And it also induces in me feelings of resignation because I don't know what to do

and haven't known what to do for a long time. So I'm just being honest. It's no worth putting up a charade. That's how I feel when the topic of prayer comes up, or at least that's how I used to feel. And I am so humbled to be able to say, for the first time in like a really, really long time in my journey following Jesus,

let's begin to change. And it's changed beginning. It's really hard to put dates to these things, but somewhere in the last year and a half in my life. And the reason why it feels really important for me to share that is because that change in my journey coincides with something that the Spirit of God is up to in our church community. And as I am getting to know more and more people

as a part of Bridgetown community, I have learned that that is changing for lots of us and in really profound ways. And so before I actually share anything about the Bible, I need to share more of that story because you're my church community and it's important for us to share stories about what God is doing in us

so that we know that we're not alone and so that we can begin to get a bigger picture of what Spirit of God is doing in our midst. So story time, than Bible times. How are you guys doing? Okay. To tell that story, what I have to do is tell a parable. And the parable is real because it's something that happened to me about a month and a half ago. And that's something that's this. I was backpacking on the north flank of Mount Hood about six weeks ago. you guys Mount Hood

it's a big volcano right and not half that way right it's not set to explode anytime soon but you never know like it does actually

have a smoking sulfur pit up on top so Mount Hood is really special to me I love to hike and to backpack and to run

and a number of years ago I was hiking on the east side of Mount Hood and I was looking at the glaciers and I realized the snow runoff from that mountain has been providing my drinking water for like the majority of my life. And all of a sudden I was like, I love this mountain.

And its minerals are filling my body and have fueled, you know. So I've had some special thing for Mount Hood and exploring all the different parts of it. And so about six weeks ago, I went to go on a three-day solitude trip, just me and Jesus, backpack. exploring the northern side of Mount Hood. It's the most remote side. There's forest roads that are really, really long and bumpy to get to the trailheads to hike many miles to get there. So it's actually also the least popular

because you have to work really, really, really hard to even get there. And so I was excited to go on this trip. And I was also excited to take this journey because I love backpacking for lots of reasons. I love the solitude, but I also love what I experience is what many people experience when they run is the runner's high. Anybody? When you push your body really, really hard, your body does something really awesome. It creates all these natural chemicals inside your body, and you feel really, really good. And that's cool. What is also cool is, at least my experience of it, is that my thinking, my thinking gets really, really clear when I'm pushing my body. And so what I often do is save up for runs or hikes or backpacking trips, a little mental list of like projects or puzzles or ideas that I'm working on related to my work. And my favorite thing is to like, you know, pick something I'm thinking about or reading,

learning about, and just like file it up, you know, put it front and center in my mind, put my head down, hit the trail, and go. And I usually make a lot of progress on things that I'm thinking about. when I do that. So that's my, I've been doing that for years. And so that was my mode, hitting the trail. And so I had about three miles in the first stretch with lots of steep elevation before a fork in the road. And where I was going, you'll see why this is ironic, or deeply meaningful, actually. I was headed to a place called Eden Park. And I was going to explore some campsites there. And so I was cruising, having a great great time. I'm looking up occasionally, but heads down, making a lot of progress mentally on

some puzzles in Exodus chapter four that I've been thinking about for a long time, just in case you wanted to know. There's some weird stuff in Exodus 4, trust me. So I was cruising, having a great time. And then all of a sudden, to my left, I heard and then saw rustling in the bushes. And it startled me. And because you... Usually when something's rustling in the bushes, it's an animal. And usually if the animal that you are fine running into, it immediately leaps out and runs away. And that was not what happened.

Like, this was a rustling in the bushes and nothing ran away, which usually means, like, it might be a bear or something like that, which is kind of cool, but also not cool at all at the same time. So I'm like, what is the thing in the bushes? And then I look and I realize, oh, it's not an animal. It's a human. It's a woman. There's a woman crouching in the bushes like rustling.

around. And so the next thing that entered my mind, this all happened like two seconds, next thing entered my mind was like, oh, she's going to the bathroom. And I just like have stumbled upon her. And this is, side note, this is one of the great benefits of going on like backpacking trips in the middle of nowhere is you can relieve yourself anywhere you want and usually have great views while you do it. And I just got to make sure you cover it up. So anyway, so I thought that's what's. happening. I came across a woman going to the bathroom. This is not a great situation. So I'm just going to

keep going off to the side. Then she stands up, and she's not going to the bathroom. Her mouth is full, and she says with the full mouth, holding her hands out, she just said, look at all these huckleberries. They're just everywhere.

And I look around me to both sides on the trail, and I see immediately what she's talking about. And I'm not sure. I have seen lots of huckleberries in the fall in the Cascade Mountains, but the trails were just surrounded.

I was immersed in the thickest, densest huckleberry bushes, more loaded with fat, purple berries than I'd ever seen before. And I just, I have proof that I'll show you because it was like a you-pick blueberry farm. It's like just so loaded and you're like, this has to have been cultivated,

but of course it wasn't because it's really in the middle of nowhere. So I did the thing that I hope you would do, which is to pause and to like smell the berries, which all of a sudden I could once I noticed that they were there. And then I just stepped to the side and started eating lots of berries. And the berries followed me around for the next three days of my backpacking trip. And there was just, it was a certain long stretch of elevation. I'm sure a million environmental factors. go into why the berries were so dense that day,

or at least that week or months. But I had berries as snacks. I had huckleberries in my trail mix. I loaded my oatmeal every morning with them. I learned that huckleberries keep you very regular, which is great on the trail, keep things flowing, you know. And it was just like all of a sudden,

this whole layer of my experience got enriched. And you could smell them, especially in the heat of the day. The berries would smell. And it was like, all of a sudden, what was already going to be a great trip, just had this layer of additional richness to it. And it was a really special gift. So as I was cruising for the next three days, day two, I went on a long kind of ascent of this really cool area

that I won't tell you the name of, otherwise hundreds of people might discover it. So I went up this area and I was praying and I felt my attention really being drawn back to that moment. And I felt like the spirit was inviting me to see something really important there that I needed to reflect on. And as I did that, I realized that what the experience that I had condensed in just those couple minutes that just totally transformed the rest of my three days on the mountain. was like a miniature parable of my own spiritual journey over the last year and a half. I didn't change locations when I encountered that woman on the trail. I was in the same exact spot that I was before I knew that she was there. But the moment she pointed out to me, this thing that was surrounding me,

my whole experience of that place became different. and my awareness became deeper, and all of a sudden I was having experience that was engaging my whole body. I could smell the berries. I was tasting the berries. I was noticing all kinds of different things as I went further on from there.

And I realized like that's like exactly the gift that I have been given over the last year and a half in my journey, which is this. I hit the trail according to habit. And at this point in my life, my main habit and my main way of engaging Jesus is through my mind and through my conscious mind, which is a really great thing and a great gift. And I've had an amazing privilege to be able to spend years and years developing all of these tools in language and historical research and culture to read and understand scripture.

And I love to spend my days in a room by myself, like I did today, reading, studying, writing, preparing to teach and to share what I'm learning. But on the trail, what I realized was when I engaged in an environment, like the northern flank of Mount Hood, the way I always do, and primarily there to facilitate the life of my mind, I was walking by something that was really there that I simply didn't have eyes to see. And the problem wasn't the berries.

The problem was me. And it wasn't even that there was something wrong. It's that I had trained myself to only notice and access and interact with certain dimensions of my human experience. And all of a sudden, can you guys see where I'm going here? I realized that's exactly my journey. So you could put it this way, something began to happen a year and a half ago

where I realized that I have a severely underdeveloped soul. My mind's pretty sharp, and I spend a lot of time focusing on that, engaging with God through that way. But when it comes to other aspects of my whole human person as a way to engage Jesus. I am like a baby. I'm like a baby. Not even a toddler.

Like a year and a half, it's not even a toddler. Is a year and a half a toddler? I have kids, and I don't remember. Maybe they begin to walk at 12, 15 months, something like that. So, okay. So that's my terrible. And here's how it corresponds to my reality. And I'm not sure if it was entering my middle 40s a few years ago

or the COVID isolation, who knows. But I began to have just a layer of sadness over my life and my journey of following Jesus because primarily the way that I engaged it was through my mind as ideas and texts and things, beautiful ideas, the most sublime ideas I can imagine, which is why I'm so taken with it. But it was a set of ideas to me.

And I begin to become really dissatisfied and wondering, like, is it just a set of ideas? And if it's just a set of ideas, it isn't even real in the first place? And is there something more? And so I began to see a spiritual director at the recommendation of a friend, and that has turned out to be a great gift to me. And my spiritual director invited me to start doing something very simple, which it was to begin each day with a period. of silence and to open my hands and ask God to speak to me and address me, my whole me,

in some way that I could understand and latch on to. And so I began to do that. And would you like to know what happened as a result of that? Nothing happened as a result of that. And like for a really long time, nothing happened. But I was like, I what I have to lose here? So I just kept doing it. Another thing that I started doing was I have two little boys.

And so I began to engage them in prayer in a new way, which, you know, maybe I'm a delinquent parent. I'm not sure that I just thought of this because of this whole experience. But what I tried to do was at bedtime, like pay attention, ask them to tell me. Or at dinner time, we often ask them highs and lows. and whatever low points they experienced or talked about in their day, I would bring that up at bedtime. You'd be like, let's pray about that. Let's pray about the fact that you were told that you're like,

you suck at kickball, or that somebody thinks, you know, that whatever, you're dumb, and that friend group excluded you and doesn't want you to play with them or something. Let's pray about those things. And so I began to pray about these, on one level, very simple, but very concrete, relational places of pain with my boys. and over time, it was really remarkable. Some really cool things happened where those situations were resolved in their lives

or were relationships that were really painful and difficult, like they got healed in some surprising way, and like now they're kickball buddies or something. And it was so simple, but on another level, you guys, it's so silly, I feel embarrassed to say this, but I was shocked. Like, I was shocked that it was. it felt like God was responding to these requests for these situations in my, in my boys' lives.

I was like, is this really happening? And I could rationalize it away, like, well, the world is a strange place. Sometimes you desire things and pray about them, and then they work out. Sometimes you do and they don't. But what I chose to do was I chose to trust that God was beginning to answer my silent prayer each morning. but God was doing it, not through my mind, but through the medium of my relationships in my life. So that was one kind of cool leaf that turned.

Another set of experiences that I had were connected to things in our community in the last year and a half. And some of these I don't have categories for us. I'm just going to tell you what happened because I know it's happening to some of you too. I've had moments, sometimes when we're gathering together on Sundays, but other times, like other random moments,

and it'll be like a phrase, like a word or a phrase, will just enter my mind. And sometimes it's because I'm being open to the presence of God in that moment, and it's happened a couple times, like in a situation where I didn't have Jesus on my mind. Sorry, Jesus.

But a phrase enters my mind. And I'm like, really surprising. Like, what's that? Like, why would I think about that right now? And then as the day, day goes on, there'll be something else that happens where that word or phrase comes up, but in some other way. Are you with me? And then, you know, some of them were like really personal where it's like two days later, I'm like, oh my gosh, like, I think that was for me, like to hear

that. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? And on one level, I'm like, am I crazy? I think I'm crazy. But then on another level, it's just, it's happened enough times where I wish would happen more because some of those experiences have become really, really precious and special to me and unfolded in really cool things. And so I began to have those experiences and to be open to them and to trust that the spirit really is getting my attention and opening my eyes to see that there's this whole way to be a human in relationship to Jesus that's additional to just my mind and thinking about things. And one other thing happened

that just kind of blew the lid for me. And I've shared this with a few people, but I feel like I'm a little nervous to share it, but I feel like I need to. Over the summer, I went camping with my family and extended family up on one

of the San Juan Islands. You guys know the San Juan Islands? Up in the upper sound, Pugetown. And so we have to get there by boat. And as we were driving up to to catch the boat to go out there, I had a kind of a cold in the back of my throat, and as we drove up there, it got really painful.

Like, I got really bad sore throat. And so we get out onto the island, and my throat turns from, like, irritating to excruciating. And over the course of the three days we're on the island, it's like my throat is swelling, closed more and more. And I woke up one morning, and no joke, felt like I had a huge piece of steak jammed in the back of the, my throat, except it was my throat.

And so I just kind of had to endure through that and take lots of ibuprofen. And when we got back on the mainland again, I went right to urgent care. And the doc looked at me, and he was like, dude, you have a big thing growing in the back of your throat. And you need to deal with that, like, quickly. So I was like, okay. So he gave me like a steroid to reduce the swelling. and that was a godsend because it hurt so bad.

And so we got back into Portland and I scheduled an appointment. And basically I had to schedule like a minor surgical operation to deal. I'm trying to spare you the gross details because they're gross. But I needed to have a surgery to get rid of the thing that was expanding in my throat.

So we were going to go to dinner at some friends the next night. And so we needed to call them and their friends would go to church here. And we need to say like, hey, I don't know if I'm going to want to eat anything tomorrow. Sorry. So we'll keep you updated because I'm going to have this minor surgery tomorrow.

And so this friends, as they share it, went out on a limb because they felt like the spirit told them to come to our house and pray that my throat would be healed. And so I was like, yes, please, you know. So we had this really cool moment where they came and at the family and we prayed together for my throat to be healed. And so it's most bizarre experience. experience. So I woke up in the morning, it was all very still, I still left steak, shoved in the back of my throat. And so I need to distract myself because I was going to have this procedure at 11 a.m. And so I just went and played built Lego all morning with my boy. This was great distraction. And I kid you not, I get up to go put on my shoes and to get my keys, to get in the car and to go to this procedure. And I'm walking by the bathroom.

and it becomes very clear to me in a moment that something changed in the back of my throat. And I knew this because I had to go to the bathroom and deal with that change. But it was like, what just happened? And so I go to the doctor and they check me in, and I tell them about what happened, and then they do this scan on the back of my throat,

and they're like, you're good to go. Like, we don't need to do this procedure. dealt with it. And I was like, how often do people's bodies deal with that? And the doctor was like, it can happen, it doesn't always happen, but it did happen to you. And so, like, what do you do with that? So, I mean, I was just truly stunned. It was one of these moments where I'm almost embarrassed to say, like, I, it took me a moment to realize, like, I think,

I think God's healing power restored my throat. Are you guys with me? And I actually can't really rationalize that away because it happened to me. Are you with me? So this is what I'm talking about, and I'm saying in the last year and a half of my life, I just began to have experiences

where all of a sudden this whole layer of reality is opening up around me. And I have a hunch that it's always been there. like those huckleberries. But for one reason or another, through habits, formation, and whatever traditions I've been raised in, though I'm not going to blame that,

I'm sure it has a lot to do about my choices. I have become blind to this rich, delicious experience that is all around me, and in fact it has never not been around me, but I haven't been aware that it is there. And that was the gift of my huckleberry. experience on the mountain, was that I really truly believe that that is what my journey has been over the last year and a half. And the reason why it's important for me to share this with you

as my church family is I know that I am not alone in this experience, anybody. And I'm not trying to sensationalize anything because I just condensed a whole bunch of things like into a short few minutes. The majority of that year and a half has been a lot of quiet mornings, just trying to quiet the chaos of my mind and wondering if God even exists at all. You know what I say? But then I have these other moments that are like, oh my, oh my gosh, like I had just had an experience. And it's not in my mind. It's like really in my life and in my relationships. And so that is my story to offer to you. What I also have to offer to you is a whole set of reflections on scripture

that I've actually been sorting out for quite a few years now. And these experiences have made me come back to these biblical reflections and see them like those huckleberries with a brand new set of eyes. Because they're not just ideas to me, they're actual experiences. And so I'm going to shift right now

into the arena where I feel much more comfortable. And that's to talk about the Bible, but we're not done with experience yet. We'll loop it back. How are you guys doing? Okay. Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to show you, we're going to blitz through a whole bunch of biblical passages, and I'm going to show you stories that talk about gardens and mountaintops and heaven and clouds and temples and rivers

and the relationship between heaven and earth and prayer and the spirit. and what all of these themes and ideas in scripture have in common is that I really think they're actually all about one thing and they're the thing that I am beginning to learn how to become aware of and experience in my life and that is the presence of Huckleberries. So I invite you to ponder a story with me that's very well known. It's in the Gospel of Luke chapter 23

It's the moment where Jesus is being crucified and there's a criminal being crucified next to him and that criminal has a real change of heart. He was making fun of Jesus and now the criminal says, Jesus, would you remember me when you come into your kingdom? You guys know this moment in the story? It's very, very powerful. Jesus' response to him is very interesting.

What Jesus says to this guy is truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Now maybe you're like me, and for a long time, if you read or reflected on this, in your mind you might have swapped out the word paradise with heaven. Today you'll be with me in heaven, and you're not entirely wrong in doing that, but that's not what Jesus says. What he says is, today you'll be with me in paradise. Now what's interesting about that is that word paradise.

What on earth would it mean for Jesus to say that? So the word that Jesus uses, you'll learn a little Greek in Hebrew right now, it's the Greek word, the Greek word Pardesos, Luke's account is written in Greek. And that word in Greek, actually, this is a whole rabbit hole that you really don't need to know. It's actually a Persian word, Pardes, that means garden, but it was adopted into Greek as a lone word. And our translations actually don't even really translate the word. They just spell it with English letters. You guys with me?

So about 200 years before Jesus, two 300 years, there was a brilliant crew of trilingual scholars who knew Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and they wanted to make the Hebrew Bible accessible to all these Greek-speaking Jews around the world. And so they translated the Hebrew and Aramaic Bible into Greek in something called the Septuagint. And all throughout the Septuagint,

any time the word Paradisos appears, It's translating the Hebrew word gone. And what all of these words mean is garden. Garden. Now, if you are a Jewish man like Jesus, and you're a Bible nerd like Jesus was, Jesus was many, many things, but one of them was a Bible nerd,

which I take a lot of heart from, there's only one garden on the brain when he says, I'll meet you in the garden later today. You guys with me? And it's the garden that appears on page two. of his Bible, which is the Garden of Eden. So what on earth does it mean for a dying man to say to another dying man,

I'll meet you later today when you meet up with me in the Garden of Eden? Are you with me? So just let that sit first. What does it mean to say a thing like that? And what's interesting is because the presence of the garden and of the paradise is in their future at that very moment. Yeah, like later today. Their immediate future.

When we're dead, I'll meet you with the gardens later today. What is that supposed to me? Because the Garden of Eden is a thing that appears at the beginning of the biblical story. The Garden of Eden is introduced in Genesis chapter 2. So we're hopping from the Gospel of Luke all the way back to the first book of the Bible in Genesis. On page 2, there's this really remarkable story where the pre-creation world is depicted is this desolate desert with no water. And so what God does is he provides a river that pops up out of the ground

and it flows and it makes mud. And out of the mud, two things happen. One, God plants a garden. And there's just trees flowing everywhere and that stream turns into a river. The water is a whole garden. Also, mud is created. And out of that mud, God forms Adam, the human, and breathes the breath of life into the human.

So there's a lot of debate about how. to interpret these stories, early stories in Genesis chapter of one and two. Yes, that's no secret to anybody, yeah? But what nobody debates is that these stories are set in the past, yeah? Like, at the beginning. The Garden of Eden is planted in the book of the Bible called the beginning. So, it's in the past. So what, and what you learn is then God plants the garden in Eden. So this just furthers the puzzle even more because when is the garden? Is it in the past? Or is it in the immediate future for Jesus and the criminal? Today I will meet you in the garden of Eden. You guys, are you guys with me? That's the puzzle, right? So these are the types of things that I work on when I go hiking and running.

It's like, like, what's that all about? Is it in the past, the future? It actually gets even more complicated. So if you hop from the first scroll of the Bible and you go to the very last book of the Christian Bible, to the revelation, and to the very last chapters and scenes of the revelation, the plot thickens. So there, John, the visionary, is having this dream vision and what he sees is a new sky and a new land because the first sky and the first land had passed away. There's no longer any sea. And I saw a holy see. And I saw a holy sky. city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. So there's a city, a new Jerusalem. It's in heaven, but what's in heaven is coming to be one with earth, yeah, to be married to

earth in the form of a bride adorned for her husband. That's how that particular vision opens. How that vision continues on in Genesis and Revelation chapter 22 is that John sees the river of the water of life. And you're like, oh, it's the Garden of Eden. Yeah? It's the river that came up that God planted the garden with. Clear as crystal coming out from the throne of God, and there's the tree of life there. And you're like, oh, it was a city. It was heaven, but now it's on earth, and it's a garden. It's a garden city. So here we are on the last page of the Bible, and this is not in the past, and it's not in the immediate future, like for Jesus and the criminal. It's in like the future future, it's in the cosmic future. And so the plot thickens yet again.

When is paradise, my friends. It's in the past, it's in the future, or it's in the future, future. Tracking with me? Okay, these are not all your options, right? So let's just fill out the puzzle with one last possibility. And that possibility comes up, and it's mentioned by the Apostle Paul. In his letter to Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul talks about a prayer time that he had, 14 years ago, that turned into like a vision, like a dream vision that he had.

And here's what he describes. It's funny. He talks about him having this experience like it's about somebody else. Like, I had this friend, you know, who had this experience. But then he's about to say a few sentences down that it was himself. So he says, okay, so here's this thing. I know this guy in the Messiah who 14 years ago was caught up into the third tier of heaven, whether it was in the body or out of the body,

I don't know. God knows, but I know that this guy, whether in the body or out of the body, I'm not really sure. God does, no. I was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things

that no one is permitted to tell. So a couple things are noeworthy. Notice how he describes the same exact place that he experienced with two different words. Do you see the two words? One's heaven. Paradise. Apparently, they're swappable. There are two ways of talking about the same reality. And even though this was an experience that Paul had 14 years ago from when he's writing the

letter, in the moment that he had it, paradise was a very present reality. Are you tracking with me? He had an experience of paradise now. So this really fills out all the options now. When is paradise? Is it in the past? Is it in the immediate future? is it in the cosmic future future or is it available in the present? And I hope that you just have this deep instinct in you that the answer to this question is yes. And you may not even fully know why you think the answer is yes, but I think that you're right.

And I think that is the assumption that Jesus and Paul and the author of Genesis and John the visionary, all had in the back of their minds, which is why they can talk about paradise as appearing in many times in many and many places. And you guys, the plot thickens even more. So in the Revelation, we were in the last chapter of the Revelation. Let's go now to the first chapter of the Revelation

when John's visionary experiences begin. And he talks about how when his visionary experiences begin, he heard something from the Lord God Almighty. And what he heard is God saying, I am the alpha and the omega. It's the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the beginning and the end. I am the one who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Is your vision of reality broken yet? Do you get his point, though? So I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and the kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, I was on the island of Potmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. What he means is,

the church is undergoing a local persecution and he's exiled on a prison island because of being very bold in his announcements of the story of Jesus in this community. And on the Lord's Day, I was in the spirit, and if you've ever tried to read the last book of the Bible, like, you know what happens next. It gets crazy, right?

From this moment on. and and what happens is he all of a sudden he's in the heavenly temple and he meets this human figure who's on fire and is wearing this like flashing lightning bolt type of clothing and he realizes it's the risen Jesus that he's encountering and the risen Jesus says hey I need you to write letters to seven churches and when he gets to the second church the letter to the second church, this is in Revelation chapter 2, what he says to the people of Ephesus, he says a lot of things the people of Ephesus,

but one of the things he says is, if you guys overcome the obstacles in your way to remaining faithful to me, I will give you the authority to be with me and to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God. Hey guys doing. So where is John?

He's on an island, but he's also in the spirit, and he's in heaven at the same times. He's tracking? Okay? And then what he hears is that a paradise is apparently available now too, not just for him, but also to the experience of a whole bunch of Jesus followers

that he used to be with, but that he's not with quite at that moment, but that Jesus is talking to. They can all experience paradise no matter where they are. So this opens up a parallel question, and this is another type of thing that I like to nerd out about when I'm getting runners-high on the trail. And it's a parallel question, which is where is paradise? And we know at least one thing that it's on a Greek island called Popmas.

Okay, so let me just pause real quick here. How are you guys doing? So let's just stop and say, when we hit these moments in scripture, where you're like, I don't have categories for what they're talking about. It's rubbing up against my ways of normally vogue. viewing and existing in the world, we really, really need to pay attention to those moments. Because what we're encountering is that Jesus and the apostles and the biblical authors have a fundamentally different view of reality than most of us do, and certainly the view of reality

that's fashionable right now in our cultural climate. And it's really hard to put it into words, which is why the imagery of gardens and mountaintops and clouds and temples are all different. ways in the biblical story to try and describe something. And that's something is this. In the biblical author's imagination, the reality as you and I experience it, in our like conscious imaginations and daily experience, the reality that we encounter with our five senses and our awareness of the four dimensions that we inhabit, right, heights with depth, and then our experience of time, which is a dimension connected to space. Thank you, Albert. I started. So time is a part of our passage through space.

And in those four dimensions, and with our five senses, the biblical authors just take it for granted that that actually is not all of reality that there is to be experienced. There is a whole layer and dimension of reality that it's not just real, it's actually more real than what we experience in our normal conscious experience. It's actually so real that it is the source and ground

of all reality that we do experience. In fact, there's a reality that's so real without that layer of reality, we wouldn't be having the reality that we do have with our five senses and with our four dimensions. Are you guys with me? They just take this for granted,

which is why they don't like write philosophy books on it, because they weren't trying to convince anybody of it because they all just took it for granted, right? And so when we read the Bible and we're like, when is paradise? Is it in the past? Is it in the present? And the future, is in the future future?

And the answer, of course, is, yeah, we're just not thinking on the same wave legs here. If we actually saw the world the way that Jesus did, we would know that paradise isn't a time and it's not a place. Notice that in all of these moments, what Jesus says to the criminal is today you will be with me. Notice that in Paul's experience, he was caught up and he begins hearing and seeing things and he encounters a person. person. When John is in the heavenly temple, he encounters a person. The view of reality that all of these earliest Christians and Jesus himself take for granted is that paradise isn't just a place or a time, it's a person. It's a person. At the center of, I can't even do it without using spatial language, the ground and the source of all reality that makes every part of our lived

experience, even real in the first place, is a beautiful, beautiful mind and heart whose very essence is outpouring, others-centered, life-giving eternal love. And without that consistent, eternal outpouring of love, we wouldn't exist, that we constantly live surrounded by hawkleberries. and in fact there has never been a moment or a molecule that hasn't had Huckleberry's making its existence possible. Are you guys with me? They just take this for granted. And so that's why Paradise can be in the past, in the present,

it can be in the future or the future future. Paradise can appear on the Greek island and the plot still thickens yet. Are you guys with me? Okay, so let me tell you a story. Another story. I told you I was going to blitz you with a lot of Bible. So this is a story from the book of Genesis again.

we're really hopping around. This is about a guy named Jacob, and it happens right after this guy and his mom scheme up this plan to deceive and trick his dad and his brother out of this first-born inheritance, and they succeed. And so his brother wants to murder him, and so he has to flee into exile. And so while he's a good reason to flee,

your brother wants to kill you, so he's on the run. and he's in between two places that are called Beersheva, which is in modern-day Israel-Palestine, and Haran, which is like in far, like eastern Syria, almost to Iraq and modern Iraq. And the distance between those, a couple hundred miles, a few hundred miles, and a lot of desert,

just a lot of empty uninhabited desert, a lot of it still today. And so he's somewhere just at a certain place, and he's tired in a field. So he just lays down, puts his head on a rock, and sleeps. And he has a dream, and that's actually really important for this scene and actually for this whole theme here. He enters into another level of conscious awareness, and in that dream, he meets a person.

He sees heaven and earth, united as one through like this bridge, and the one that he sees at the bridge between heaven and earth is like a human-like figure that is called Yahweh, the God of Israel. And notice, it's a lot like John's encounter of the one that he meant in the heavenly temple. And so what Yahweh says to this guy is, I am with you as you go into exile on your way to Haran. So just notice, this is like the inverse of what Jesus said to the criminal. What Jesus said to the criminal is, you'll be with me, and it will be paradise later today. Now what's happening is Yahweh appearing to this guy in the middle of a desert saying, I am with you,

and all of a sudden that desert exile experience in Jacob's life becomes a heaven on earth moment. You guys with me? And he wakes up from that dream, and he's so terrified. And what he says is this place is a house of God, Bethel, and he says, this is the gate of heaven. It's a portal between heaven and earth. and so he pours out this sacrifice on a rock and dedicates it to become a sacred space in the future. And what's remarkable about the story

is notice that Jacob doesn't go to a sacred space to encounter God's presence in the midst of his exile. Do you see it's actually the opposite? He encounters paradise in the middle of a desert, and then all of a sudden his awareness that this is a paradise spot, that's what makes him aware that this is a holy space and that there are huckleberries everywhere,

and I just didn't, I just didn't know it. You're tracking? With me? So now we have a couple options. Now, Paradise can be in the middle of a field somewhere in between Haran and Be'ar Shava, and just to make it complete, and I'll try and make this one really short, turn to the scroll of Ezekiel with me.

I actually did my dissertation on the book of Ezekiel, and it was amazing, and I could bore you for hours about things in Ezekiel, but this thing's not boring. This is in Ezekiel chapter 8. In Ezekiel chapter 8, Ezekiel is sitting with some friends in a house. He's exiled in Babylon in a refugee camp, and he's sitting in his house, and look at how he talks about this experience.

In the six-year, in the six-month on the fifth day, I was sitting in my house, like you often do, along with some elders of Judah sitting before me, and then all of a sudden the hand of Lord Yahweh came upon me there. Now, whatever he means by that experience, I'm pretty sure it was a severe alteration in his conscious awareness of what's happening. Because look at what he says. I looked and there's a guy and the guy's on fire. And he grabs me and all of a sudden when he grabs me, it's the spirit. Wait, is it the human guy

or the spirit who grabs him? Exactly. Yes. Answer's yes. The spirit lifted me up in between land and sky, in between heaven and earth and in visions of God and took me to Jerusalem. Now just really stop and think about that one. If you are between heaven and earth, where are you? Now, he already told us where he is, yes? Where is he? He's sitting in a house and a refugee camp in Babylon. That's where he is, but he is also in the spirit, and now he's traversing the universe, and he's going to go take a virtual tour of Jerusalem, and he's going to be there,

but nobody can see that he's there, and he's cruising around, and then he wakes up and he's back in his house again. So when and where is paradise, you guys? Is it in a house? Is it in a field? is it on a Greek island? And you already know where I'm going with this question, right? So the answer is exactly. Answer is exactly right.

So the question, these are two ways of asking the same thing, and we're hitting up against the same exact view of reality that Jesus, the prophets, the biblical authors, just take for granted. And what I really want to draw attention to is the fact in these stories that I just showed you, the key is about the state of consciousness. John talks about how he was in the spirit.

Jacob enters into a dream state. Ezekiel is there and something happens to him in the spirit that changes his level of awareness. Now, I'm not a psychologist, but I know enough to know that what we call our conscious awareness when we're like awake and we're cruising around, is actually quite a really fragile and malleable thing, isn't it? So our, and dream, the fact that these happen during dream moments is highly, highly significant.

So listen to any like popular psychology, you know, podcast or something like that, and what you'll learn is that what we experience as conscious awareness is very much a malleable, almost plastic-like construct. We experience it as reality, but it's a lot weirder than, than you think. From our earliest moments at a young, innocent, vulnerable age, you know, we're just oblivious, you know? And if you haven't had the chance to spend time around little kids, it becomes very clear real quick, like they're just oblivious,

and it's so beautiful and wonderful. But from our earliest conscious memories, we go into life, oblivious and vulnerable, and we start experiencing pain, and we start experiencing disappointment and grief. And what we begin to do is develop coping mechanisms, right, and self-preservation techniques for how we're going to survive and cope with this very difficult and disappointing world. And those techniques turn into habits, and they actually begin to shape, right?

The very malleable, like, neuronal pathways of our brains. I'm not making this up. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? And so what we experience as reality is filtered through years and years and years, of these shields and filters that we build up. And you usually know this when trauma enters into your life and you find yourself reacting in a way that you don't know why. And it's because you're reacting according to the vision of reality

that you've been constructing since you've been a little kid. And the reason why we get surprised in those moments is because it feels irrational. You're like, that's not reality. And your brain is like, yes, it is. It's the reality that you've made for yourself. and that has been made for you through your life experiences. But when we go to sleep, something happens.

It's like our guard is down. You don't stop being conscious, right, when you're asleep, but you enter into a much more deep, primal core level of your human being. Are you guys with me? And your body is fully aware of what's happening and is sorting all of it out in weird dreams and so on. But it's fascinating. In our cultural setting,

usually take our dreams to be like weird fantasies, and I don't know what I ate before going to bed that night. And what we take to be the most real thing is like what we're aware of during the day. The biblical authors have the exact opposite assumption. What they assume is like this, what we're all aware of right now is like a very sub, sub, distorted, manipulated, created version of reality that we're all making for ourselves. And that the most true experiences of reality happen when our guard is down. And when we are allowed to encounter the reality of who we are and what the world is in moments of vulnerability

and in moments of surrender. And that's why sleep is always a crucial moment in biblical stories where people encounter God in ways that they simply don't when they're awake. How are you guys doing? I'm not making this up, right? This is like in the Bible. This is how the biblical authors see the world.

actually corresponds to like the reality of our of our experience. And so when all of these pieces began to form together for me, like when I was on the trail and over the last year and a half, it just kind of like all the pieces locked into place for me. And it became clear to me that for 25 years that I've been following Jesus, I've been cultivating my active level of conscious awareness as my primary way of engaging with Jesus in a of hearing what he has to say through the scriptures. And that's a great tool, and that's a great way to engage and hear from Jesus. But it is not the only way, like not even by a long shot.

And there is a level of conscious awareness and reality that's like soul level. And it's a full-on language in a way of interacting with the eternal now. And with the presence of the huckleberries that is all around us, It's never not been all around us, but just we find it very difficult to cultivate the habits of mind and heart that make it aware of the eternal now in our day-to-day lives. And so it became clear to me that I just simply have a severely underdeveloped soul, and that that is a huge part of these years of feeling like, where is God in my life? And the problem was not God, the problem was me. And it's not that I did something wrong, it's that I found myself into years and years of habit formation in my mind and heart

that slowly blinded me to something that was never, ever absent. It was always present. It was actually making every part of my existence possible in the first place. And what it took was a set of experiences to make me aware of this thing that, what this vision of reality is claiming is that at the heart of all being and existence, it's not a certain time or a moment or a place. It's a person. And it's a person whose essence and heart is love,

outpouring others-centered love. And that if I will open myself and surrender all the shields that I build up for self-preservation and just open myself through practices that are very ancient and that go right back to the prayer habits of Jesus that I can open myself to paradise now in ways that will really break your vision of reality. At least that's where I'm at.

How are you guys doing? Can I show you one more story? Okay. This is a story this may also be familiar to you. It's from the Gospel of Luke chapter 9. It's where Jesus takes three of his closest followers, Peter, James, and John, and they go up onto a mountain. And your radar should be like going crazy.

They go up onto a mountain to do what? To pray, to pray. And while he's praying, Jesus starts looking like that guy that Ezekiel met and that Jacob met. and that John will meet on the island of Popmouse. He turns into a fireball, right? And it gets even more bizarre

because there's two other glorious figures there, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory, and they're talking with Jesus about the exodus that he's about to fulfill in Jerusalem. And then it gets even more bizarre because, remember, where are they? They're on a mountain, but then a cloud comes and surrounds them.

So where are they now? Well, they're in heaven now. and what they hear is a voice when they enter the cloud. And what that voice reveals is the true identity of the eternal now. The true identity of Jesus, this is my son. And in the gospel stories, you know, down when they're off the mountain and in Galilee or Judea, everybody has opinions about Jesus. Who is this guy?

Is the son of Joseph? Is he John the Baptist raised from the dead? Like, who is he? Who is he? And it's in this moment. Notice the collection of themes on a mountain in heaven, hearing and seeing the eternal mouth, seeing paradise as a person, and all of a sudden they can see who Jesus really is. He is the one who makes all of reality possible.

And then in a moment, it's over. And they go down from the mountain. So what I'm not trying to say is that life following Jesus is just filled with these kinds of experiences every single moment and every single day. Clearly not. Remember even Paul said like, yeah, that was 14 years ago when he had that experience up to paradise in the third heaven. And we're not living in the Garden of Eden. Like I don't think you need me to tell you that, right? So I'm dying and so are you.

I hope you know that. And things aren't okay here. However, however, even in life outside of Eden, God just has this habit and this pattern of planting moments of paradise in the deepest moments of our exile and pain. And it creates the moment for an opportunity for us, whether it's like a crazy source road on an island, wondering if I'm going to choke to death at night, whether it's the crisis that you find yourself in right now, in your family, whether it's the diagnosis that you got from a doctor in this last week. I don't know what it is, but we're all encountering moments of deep pain and grief and loss. And we have a choice. We have a choice to make about what vision of reality will I choose is most true

and will I choose to inhabit. And if part of following Jesus means becoming like him, which means adopting his way of seeing the world, than what I want most for myself and what I want for you as my church family is to go on a journey and forming the habits of mind and heart that will allow me to see the huckleberries. Are you with me? And to see this thing that is all around us,

just waiting to be experienced and encountered. And it will likely not happen in ways and times that I will prefer or that are convenient, but that doesn't make it not real. it actually makes it more real. And because the one that we're encounter, it's not predictable, and it's not a formula, which is why I don't like it very much, because it's like it's not a dictionary, right? It's not like a text, and I can't like interpret it and like know what it means.

That's not how relationships work, but that apparently is how this relationship works. And so my invitation to you is the same invitation that has been the same thing. spirits to me, which is I just have a deep, deep hunch that there is more to be tasted and that there is more to be experienced and that there are things that the eternal now, that the person of paradise, wants to do in our midst if we're willing to surrender and to open our eyes and our minds and our hearts.