The Kingdom of Heaven

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour and it worked all through the dough.” Matthew 13:33
Heaven is not something without. It is within. It is within. I also believe it is hope.
“Anyone who is among the living has hope - even a live dog is better off than a dead lion.”  Ecclesiastes 9:4
Today I will have hope.  Faith is the opposite of fear.  Hope is the opposite of despair. I will not psych myself out. I will not think myself into a hole.  Rather I will trust in God and pray.  I will meditate. I will love though God knows I have reason to fear and reason to fear. I will be totally illogical and believe in today. I will block out the negative and focus on the positive. I will thank the Lord for all the blessings and look to the light.  Darkness is always around but it is the light that shines on the path. I will find my Way.  I will be with God in all endeavours.
“Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lack and caught all kinds of fish.  When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets and threw the bad away.  This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:47
I would like to think of the fisherman separating the good thoughts from the bad thoughts. The thoughts of negativity, of envy, of pride, of fear, of hatred and resentment from the thoughts of love, purity, rejoicing and faith. I would like to think the good fish that are kept are the feelings, thoughts and memories of all that is right and truth. All else is removed and thrown back into the sea.  But then in the end, it is only the pure and good that remains.
But ‘throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’, well thats barbaric. And yet, the lizard and nasty animal in me are that which I’m letting go of. I’m moving forward from the primitive to the eclessiastical, from the base to the pure, from the self centred to agape.
I don’t want to live my life in fear of a Dante Hell.  “weeping and gnashing of teeth’ sort of place. Yet that’s the image. I can’t all that well politically correct it into a child’s vision of reality like the liberals always do, making their world a sanitized television place with lots of editing.  I on the other hand must face reality but the kingdom of heaven is within and the yeast is love. And God is love. So I continue to believe that I can’t ‘force’ someone to choose.  We live or we die.  We walk to the light or away.
But who would want to choose ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ or a ‘fiery furnace’.
Elsewhere I’ve had the thought that this image is tied to the inner revelation of truth rather than a Dante Hell. Hell is that experience of the ego being utterly wrong, that the false god is realized as false and the fire has been called the ‘refiner’s fire. I don’t know where that potter’s passage is. But I don’t have to be PC and stupidly liberal ignorant as only the atheist can be to accept that one day I realize that I have to give up my drug or my comforting lies and move forward. I have to acknowledge that God is love and all is love but love of agape not of lust.  I can’t have both or at least all must be within the one not the other.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within.