“Put the beauty of ten thousand worlds of paradises, like the Garden of Eden, in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness in one: what a fair and excellent thing would that be? And yet it should be less to that fair and dearest Well-beloved Christ than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten worlds.”
Imagine weaving the untamed splendor of ten thousand Edens into a single tapestry, gathering the incense of unbroken dawns, the amber light of unfallen orchards, and the first wild perfume of petals kissed by sacred dew. Gather every song that ever thawed a human heart, every pure delight of taste and touch, every blossom that ever flared with unblemished hue across uncounted galaxies. Bind them close until the cosmos trembles beneath the sheer weight of their assembled radiance.
Yet hold that boundless garden beside the countenance of Christ, and watch it shrink into a solitary, quivering bead of mist.
His is not a beauty borrowed from the earth, but the uncreated fire from which all wonder first took breath. What are all the paradises of creation before the majesty that stooped to bleed, the unsearchable meekness that bore the cross, the radiant mercy blazing in His eyes? Beside the Well-beloved, the glory of ten thousand worlds is only a frail echo, a wandering spark yearning for the hearth. To look upon Him is to watch every earthly delight dissolve like salt in an infinite ocean. All the world’s sweetness, laid beside the beauty of His face, is less than one drop of rain falling into the deep, surging fountain of ten thousand roaring seas. Here the soul stops striving, rapt in an awe no language can measure, lost in the unmeasured ocean of His loveliness. To cross that eternal threshold is to exhale every earthly sorrow into pure, unbroken dawn. The air sings with an uncreated light, yet all the splendor of pearl and gold softens into shadow before the living morning at its center. There stands Jesus, the pulse and poetry of paradise, weaving all beauty from the wound-marked tenderness of His hands. To meet His eyes is to drown in boundless belonging, where silence becomes worship and every ache is re-authored into joy. Heaven is not the splendor of a city, but the quiet, everlasting wonder of looking upon His face and resting home.
Just arriving there isn’t the goal, the encounter that awaits us there, that is the true goal. The encounter of a lifetime, the encounter that would make me do…., I truly do not know what. But if anything I know, is that it is going to be the day my life will finally find its purpose.