When my daughter sent me this recent picture of Gracyn and Griffin, I spoke these words into the solitude of my home: This is heaven. These perfect ovals which hold the perfect faces of my love. These cornflower blue eyes fixed on the promise of autumnal splendor. This coupling of brother and sister in such a pure embrace. And these gold, green, and russet leaves that hang onto October for all their worth. This is a little bit of heaven in a a troubled world.

Suffice it to say that we all need a little bit of heaven. Right here, right now, a day or a moment, a glimpse or a good, hard look. We all need a respite from whatever ails us and sends us bedraggled into the shadows of life. In his novel, Let the Great World Spin, Irish writer Colum McCann writes: Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. Even if the light is damaged and bruised, it is a little light all the same. And a little light ushers in a little heaven, a small gift into which a multitude of mysteries and glories are packed.

After five days of rain, this morning I looked out my kitchen window to see my white rabbit grazing on the hillside. She has found her little bit of heaven here, forsaking the freedom of the timber for the familiarity of our yard. And when I call her, kneeling with carrot in hand, and she runs to me with unabashed trust, I can’t help but think that heaven has found earth in this daily ritual. A little white, a little heaven to sustain me in gray world.

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes:

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

How well C. S. Lewis understands the power of a little bit of heaven, how it offers tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear–all heralding the thing I was made for. This, indeed, is the thing we desired before and after the mind no longer knows wife [or husband] or friend or work. This is heaven, and each small hint of it, each little bit of it is the secret signature of each soul.

At the ripe age of 63, like Lewis, I am more convicted that if we lose our yearning for heaven–on earth and beyond–we lose all. The stuff of our daily lives is literally rubbish in the presence and promise of heaven. We may kid ourselves into believing that a kitchen remodel or a new SUV will fill the deepest longing of our souls, but even as we leave the home improvement store or car lot, we realize that the joke is on us. The sheen of a maple cabinet or the luster of a metallic paint job pales in the brilliance of a little bit of heaven. Still, too often, we cling to our stuff, choosing to believe that it will save us from ourselves and our lives. And tragically when it ages and rusts, we just get new stuff to take its place. In our predilection to purchase, we lose all.

Or we simply work harder and longer. We thrust ourselves into the thick of all things scheduled, planned, and yet-to-be-planned. We believe that we will find heaven amidst files or in the minutes of countless meetings. At some point, we may even believe that work will define us in a way that nothing and no one else can. In rapturous moments, we justify ourselves and our work as important and necessary. And in collegial corners, we congratulate ourselves on accomplishments that pass as quickly and insignificantly as the countless daily memos that we shred or recycle.

A little bit of heaven reminds us of our transience. Although a photograph of my grandchildren can capture much, it simply cannot capture the mystery of all that is Gracyn and Griffin. When I see these faces, I also hear their voices at age 2 and 4 and 9, voices that cry out, “Grandma!” I feel the weight that this single word carries when it rises from the mouths of those I love more than life itself. These earthly moments are transient, but they remind me that there are more glorious moments to come.

And in the meantime? Fred Rogers proposes that the connections we make in the course of a life–maybe that’s what heaven is. Certainly, most of us could testify to the truth in these words, for our own connections lay claim to the presence of heaven throughout our lives. Our connections have ears to listen, mouths and arms to console. They are the living, breathing material of heaven in the here and now.

Theologian and author, N. T. Wright endorses the prospect of heaven on earth when he writes: Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about. [Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church] Colonizing earth with the life of heaven? I’m all for this. We sing about this, pray about this, write and speak about this, but to get down to the business of actual colonization, we will need to get serious about the little bits of heaven we can all acknowledge and create each day.

Lately, I’ve begun to hear my own proverbial clock ticking. If I’m going to get serious about bringing a little bit of heaven to earth, if I’m going to proclaim, Here at last is the thing I was made for, I need to begin. And what better place to begin than visiting the pumpkin patch with my grandchildren? A clear October sky, mounds of hay bales, pumpkins of all colors, sizes, and shapes, and two eager smiles. This is little bit of heaven that I can wrap my arms around.