Touching The Sky

The little boy lay on his back on the grassy hill, looking up at the blue sky. “I want to touch the sky”, he told himself. “One day, I’m going to build a tower that reaches right up to the sky so that I can touch it. Whenever he could he would play with his building blocks, practising his tower, and whenever he could he would lie on his back on the grassy hill and look up at the sky. “One day I’ll touch the sky,” he told himself.

Even as the boy grew older, the dream remained alive. And although he never told anyone his dream specifically, he got plenty of encouragement. ‘Set goals, reach high, keep your dream alive, never give up, you can do anything you put your mind to, persist.’

One morning he woke up, and he knew the time was right. He began building. He’d thought of building his tower, practised building his tower, studied about building his tower, designed his tower, saved up money to build his tower; now he began.

“I want to touch the sky”, he said. “One day I’ll touch the sky.”

At the end of each day’s work, he’d climb to the top of his tower. He’d look up, to see how close he was to touching the sky, and although disappointed that it still seemed so far away, he’d determine to wake the next day and keep building, which he did.

A month passed, a year. Each night he’d stand atop the tower, only to discover there was still a way to go. But he wasn’t going to give up. So he kept building. A year became 2, 5, 10 – he kept on building. Architects would come by to marvel at the design, engineers would come by to marvel at the structure, sightseers were a daily feature, all admiring the tower that kept getting taller and taller and taller.

One night, many years after beginning to build his tower, that little boy who had dreamed of touching the sky, and who had put his whole life into trying to achieve his dream, as he made his nightly ritual of standing atop the tower to gaze at the sunset filled sky and check his progress, that boy, now an old man, slipped, and fell to his death.

As funeral arrangements were being made, the minister asked the family why he had put so much into building his tower. What was the purpose of the tower?

“He wanted to touch the sky”, they replied.

The wise minister mused, “But he touched the sky the moment he began!”

As a little boy, I picked up the concept that God lived in the sky. He was ‘up there’, he was ‘looking down’, I was going to, if I was good, go ‘up to heaven. I heard the song “Spirit in the Sky”– ‘goin’ on up to the spirit in the sky, that’s where I’m gonna go when I die’

God lived in the sky – way up there.

But what is the sky? How can God live somewhere, be somewhere that actually doesn’t exist, that can’t be touched, that can’t be reached, that isn’t a place?

When Jesus was on Earth, He said a lot of things about himself, a lot of things about God, who He called his father, and he spoke about a Holy Spirit.

But most importantly, what he left us with was the firm notion that God wasn’t distant, and in fact God could actually live within people. The Spirit of God could be in us. We could be a part of the Kingdom of God right here, right now. How?

Both by living a life pleasing to God and by confessing that at times we’ve done things that God wouldn’t be happy with, and asking that he forgive us, and asking Him to give us this spirit. And somehow it works. It doesn’t magically turn you into a perfect person, but things start happening to you on the inside that I describe as transforming.

If you’ve been searching for a God ‘out there’ somewhere, can I suggest that maybe you’re as unlikely to find God as the boy in our story was of touching the sky. God’s not in the sky. He is what’s known as omnipresent – that is present everywhere, all around. So in the very act of reaching for God, you’ll find yourself in contact with God the moment you begin.

www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington