Recently, I was talking with a group of church staff sharing how in our pursuit of God we can become so focused upon going upward toward God, our hearts directed in a heavenly, spiritual direction, that we fail to come down from the clouds to approach each other, here on earth, in loving and gracious ways. As the old gospel song says, we become so heavenly minded we are no earthly good. Even worse, we can become self-righteous and judgmental. In our spiritual pride we can hurt people.
Anyway, in trying to share this idea, this image came to mind and I shared it off the cuff:
"We become so focused upon heaven we get pulled higher and higher, so high in the clouds we freeze, so we fall to earth not as refreshing rain but as damaging hail."I think that's a great way to think of the contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees in the gospels. Jesus fell upon the earth as a gentle rain, where the Pharisees, in their pursuit of spiritual/heavenly purity, fell upon people as damaging hail.
