Life After the Fall

We have all experienced a personal encounter with "life after the fall" when we first realized the fairy-tale was over. Are you afraid to think about yours or is yours all too real to you? Is it a divorce, the loss of a loved one, a chronic illness, or a job that you despise going to? Maybe your fairy-tale ended much earlier in life with the divorce of your parents, death of a sibling or parent, or a chronic illness in childhood.
Did you give up on paradise after the fall or search for it in all the wrong places? Are you angry at the angel keeping you out of the garden of eden or battling God to let you back in? Did you build up a wall around your heart and choose to never let it reveal it's desire for paradise again?
I was listening to John Lennon's "Imagine" yesterday and I realized for the first time how wrong he was. He posits if there were no heaven and no hell we would all live as one and everything would be wonderful. I thought if there were no heaven above us and no hell below us then heaven and hell would be trying to co-exist on earth; sound familiar?
I used to get frustrated reading the scripture that instructs us to focus on the eternal and not worry about worldly things. How God? I would ask. I have to live here. I have eat, breath, and experience this world because you put me here. "Imagine." Imagine heaven on earth. The instruction is not to quit living but to imagine heaven on earth. Put our sights on heavenly things and consider eternal consequences of our actions. God didn't want to us limit our vision but to expand it. He wants us to see through the hell on earth and to find the heavenly things.