Making it Real

The most brilliant human philosophies behave like butterflies slipping through reality’s net, like birds drawn upward in flight, ever-evading the practicalities of real life.
A thought of Torah, however, sits above your head like a reservoir of living waters. As ethereal as it may be, it needs only a small opening to burst its dam and pour down into your life.
Whatever Torah you learn, whatever you know, do something with it. Make it real.
~From "Vertical Orientations", by Tzvi Freeman

I just came across this, and it brought a couple things to mind. First, my dear Aunt Swede has said on occasion that someone "can become so heavenly minded, that they are no earthly good". I also think of the letter of James the Righteous, the brother of Yeshua, and his warning in James 1:23 that those who read the Scriptures (in context, he was speaking of the Old Testament) and walk away unchanged are like those who "look in a mirror at the face nature gave him; he glances at himself and goes his way, and promptly forgets what he looked like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law that makes us free and does not turn away, remembers what he hears; he acts on it, and by so acting he will find happiness." (ESV)

I have pondered and pondered that one...and have over the course of time decided that my thoughts will not dwell very long on heaven, but rather on the words and teachings of the One who will one day call me there, and in whose footsteps I follow here on earth until then.