Seeing the Kingdom of Heaven. Imagine that you have been turned into a fish. You are swimming down a river, and go past a city. A little while later, you find yourself in the ocean. After a while, you die.
The city you swam by was the Kingdom of Heaven. You went right past. It’s true, you did notice some very bright lights, but thought there was a “natural” explanation.
You also went under many, many bridges. You thought they were trees, leaning over the water. The water was a little warmer. There were lights moving up and down along the shore. Noises from what you didn’t know was a bandstand had a certain rhythm. You may have been dimly aware of traffic noise coming up from unseen tunnels beneath the river.
But, you did not take time to investigate. It was more important to go with the flow.
True, you did hear a rumor that “If a fish near the big bend swims up on shore, he is carefully picked up and put in a giant, temperature-controlled tank in an aquarium. He’s given free food forever and never dies.”
That sort of rumor was so ridiculous you couldn’t be bothered with it. It sounded so silly that you just ignored it. They never taught you about such things back in school. You even felt sorry for the fish who took it seriously, especially when you saw some of them beach themselves on the shore at the big bend despite your pleas to them to keep moving on.
