FOREWORD

When I sit at my desk, I can see a rocky cliff out my window.  It faces east and reflects the morning sun, making the rocks glow.

We moved here last year after I’d written Rose Rock, and I was amazed at how close this landscape is to the one I see in the story.  It was as if Rose Rock had a life of its own and was choosing to live out loud in my life.

But that’s the way it went, writing this story.  Rose Rock was born in one day and then evolved as it came to life one page at a time on Facebook as an experiment.  Father asked me to write down what I saw in my heart.  It was a description of what the Kingdom of God might look like on Earth.  How would it be different from my regular day-to-day living as it is right now?

The question of the rapture had come up in my heart and I remembered that I’d never believed in it.  Not even as a child, sleeping peacefully under a pew as the Holy Ghost meetings stretched to midnight.  Being a preacher’s kid, I listened to a boat-load of conversations about the end-of-time, and the rapture, and Armageddon.  Visiting speakers and church leaders had amazing insight into these traumatic events.

Then I’d turn over, with my head on a rolled-up coat for a pillow, and smell the musty carpet under the pews, and secretly reject their doctrines.  Regardless of scriptures and interpretations of visions, dreams and prophesies, I rejected it quietly, but kept it hidden in my heart.

I couldn’t share my thoughts because the monster of theological proof was large enough to overcome a small army.  And I was just a little girl, not nearly equipped to poke at that bear.

So I carried my secret and waited.  Early in our marriage, I shared my disbelief with my husband.  I told him that somehow the doctrines about “rapture” weren’t right.  My only explanation was “God isn’t illogical like that.  He won’t take us up there to hang out a few years while he decimates the earth and kills a whole bunch of people, only to return us back here afterwards.”

Irreverently, I said the whole doctrine was just “stupid” but then couched my comment with “I can’t prove it, but it is.”  Then I added my apex statement, “Someday, someone will prove it.”

Of course, the day I read Jonathan Welton’s “Raptureless” was the day of my emancipation.  I nearly flew into the sky without wings.  It was the “proof” I’d been waiting for my whole life.

Suddenly, I was free to talk about my secret.  It was out in the open.  The world was not coming to an end.  Rather, Heaven was coming here.  Yes!  I was set free!

Father God is a really good god.  I’d known that most of my life.  Strangely, many of my fellow christians didn’t seem to know that.  They talked about His wrath so much that God sounded like a hateful cretin.  It certainly wasn’t a description of the God I’d known since I was seven-years-old.

When Father asked me to begin writing my description of Heaven on Earth, it was like looking into the fog to see things I’d sequestered deep in my heart for a very long time.  What a thrilling joy to let them come forward.  The more I wrote, the more vivid they became.

Rose Rock is how I envision Heaven on Earth might be.  I must admit that vision is fluid and always changing, so I snatched pieces and began writing. The physical context is my own paradise on earth, and the miraculous day-to-day life is the way I see us learning to live.  I believe as we learn to live more and more miraculously, the chaos and trauma in our world will be drowned … and eventually die.

Heaven on Earth.  What do you see in your heart?  Close your eyes. What does it look like?  Is it perfection?  Happiness? No death?  Never any problems?  No chaos?  No drama?

These are all good questions because I have no idea what Heaven on Earth means to you.  It could be completely different than what I see.

But I know this much.  The Kingdom of God is within us.  Therefore, you can know what it is and what it looks like.  It is right there within you.  All you must do is see it.

Of course, I recommend doing it with Father God, who loves us more than any love we can imagine.  What you cannot see, He already sees within you and will help you.

The Kingdom of God at Rose Rock, is only the beginning of my vision.  The sequel is already being born.  It had to be.  The miraculous must spread and grow.  After all, it is life.

I hope you enjoy Rose Rock.  It may shake some doctrine and shift some paradigms.  But that’s alright.  God has a good plan for us as we head higher and deeper into His glorious Light.

I pray blessings upon each one who reads this vision and allows His Light to expand inside them, blossoming into His beautiful paradise.

 

Grace to you,

Faith Living