Diving Deeper
When I was in college, I took scuba diving as a P.E. class. The class offered additional instruction and certifications which I took advantage of. Two of those certifications were deep diving and wreck diving.
One dive for the certification took us several miles off the coast of West Palm Beach, Florida, to the sight of a freighter that was sunk as a part of an artificial reef. Upon reaching the destination, our dive instructor went over the side taking the anchor line with him. A few minutes later, he surfaced some distance from the boat and gave the captain the OK sign. Two by two, we went over the side to follow the anchor line down to the wreck.
Initially, the water was a bright yellow, filled with silt, gradually turning to green, then blue, and becoming clearer as we went deeper. Visibility went from zero at the surface to totally clear at 110 feet. We didn’t see the freighter until about 80 feet when the brilliantly colored corals and sea life became stunningly beautiful beyond description. It was like being in another world.
Living in another world
Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men. We intuitively know this life is not all there is. Visionaries from Leonardo de Vinci to Jules Verne have envisioned spaceships that would take man to outer space and submarines that would take him to inner space.
In 1943, Jacques Cousteau invented the aqua lung (better known now as scuba gear), which allowed man to breathe underwater for short periods of time. But long before these people had their first dreams, God already had a much better and eternal plan.
In the world, but not of the world
Genesis 1 gives the account of creation culminating with God creating man in His image. The Garden of Eden was picturesque perfection with Adam and Eve having perfect fellowship with God until chapter two when sin entered the world and brought separation.
Some three thousand years later the Lord Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost, leaving His home in Heaven to enter our fallen world, make perfect provision for the remission of our sin on Calvary’s cross.
After the resurrection, He ascended back to Heaven where He has prepared a place for us. For those who have called upon the name of the Lord, this world is no longer our home. We are but “pilgrims passing through.” We are to be in the world, but not of the world.
Our eternal home
Not only is Heaven our eternal home where we will go when we leave this world, but also it may be where we dwell in the here and now.
In Psalm 23:6, King David wrote: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
In Psalm 27:4, he continued: “One thing I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.”
The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:6 that He has: “Raised us up together, and made us to sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Restoring our anchor line
Like Adam and Eve, our sin broke our fellowship with God, but at the instant of our salvation, that fellowship is restored. The moment we are born again, He takes our heart of stone, replaces it with a heart of flesh, and the Holy Spirit comes to live in our heart.
God secures an anchor line from Heaven to our hearts and invites us to go even deeper in our faith.
Gradually our vision begins to change and we begin to live more by faith and less by sight. The eternal Heaven becomes more of a reality in the here and now than the temporal world in which we live.
Mel Fisher the famous diver and treasure hunter searched for the Spanish treasure galleon Atocha for over 16 long years. On July 20, 1985, he finally found it and exclaimed: “Once you’ve seen the ocean bottom paved with gold you’ll never forget it!”
As Christians going deeper in their faith catch their first glimpses of Heaven’s streets paved with gold, they will never be the same.