A.R.T. Antics

For some time now I've been thinking and even dreaming about heaven. I am very aware that my tendency especially as a person who likes to get involved in mission is to think about the here and now and forget about life ever after. These thoughts have been fuelled by by the course I am doing at the moment which has really delved into the questions of what are we here for and what is it all about. I hear some of you saying well it's all about Jesus and the Kingdom and of course I would agree with you but as this is unpicked you realise that this is an absolutely massive subject.  So I want to start from some way off ideas and state the obvious. I think we often assume we know what we think about things and actually when we go a little bit deeper we have merely swallowed what someone has taught us and it became part of what we believe. So what are we here for ?  God created for relationship with himself and with each other. So most of us are on this earth for around 80-90 years. ...

So I didn't do very well academically at primary school and I don't remember going so much quite alone and bullied all the time. Despite all of this I don't remember being a particularly unhappy child I always seem to have a smile on my face in photos.  I was very quiet though and probably had very low self esteem although you can't put such feelings into words when you are seven. Now Secondary school was quite a different story when I thought about it whilst I was in Argentina  I realised it coincided with when I got involved in the church again. Now I was brought up as a Catholic and as I mentioned early on I did go to Sunday school.  Each school or college I went to was catholic so I always had these foundations in some ways helpful and in other ways not.  I always remember believing in Jesus that he died on the Cross rose again and I always prayed it was never an issue however at the same time I did not have any revelation of Jesus nor of a relationship of...