In Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, two elderly clergy discuss what they think heaven might be like. One of them says ‘Mainly I just think about the splendours of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy.’ This week’s collect encourages us to do a similar bit of thinking, but reminds us that whatever we find ourselves imagining will inevitably come up woefully short: it tells us that God has prepared for us ‘such good things as pass our understanding’, and that God’s promises ‘exceed all that we can desire’. God’s abundance is so immense that we cannot even begin to grasp it, even if we have the energy to multiply by ten or by twelve.

If we are destined to fail, what then is the point of attempting to grasp the enormity of God’s promises? One reason for doing so is to remind ourselves of what Robinson calls ‘the splendours of the world’: we may not be able to grasp what is to come, but we can pay better attention to the good things that God has given us in the here-and-now. Once we start looking for them and thanking God for them, we find that they are everywhere, in the intricacies of the natural world, the small pleasures of life, and the love of those around us. By paying attention to these things, we are also reminded that, even if God’s promises do ‘exceed all that we can desire’, the greatest promise of all has already come to fulfilment in this life: the earthly life and death of Jesus Christ. He, too, saw the beauty of the passing seasons, made jokes, and enjoyed meals with friends. He is the link between ‘the splendours of the world’ and the ‘good things’ that ‘exceed all that we can desire’. If it’s the case that God has got much more in store for us, we can also be sure that time spent appreciating the good things we have right now is not time wasted, because it brings us closer and closer to Christ.