Last Friday night I was sitting in the Metro 29 Diner, meeting a friend with whom I had a broken relationship. As we met together for the first time in a while, I admitted that in my nervousness, the only thing I knew how to pray was lifted from Jesus himself: “Thy will be done, in the Metro 29 Diner as it is in heaven.” We laughed about that, my friend noting that he, too, had been praying our Lord’s prayer.

Sometimes, when I feel lost in the chaos and confusion of so much of our contemporary culture, and when I don’t know what to ask of God, I feel keen empathy for the disciples who beseeched Jesus, “Teach us how to pray!” Pray, he responded, that the Father’s will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. When I think about what that might mean, I imagine the clouds which hamper heaven and earth’s intrinsic unity being pushed aside. It’s as if our prayers pry open a way for the rule and reign of Jesus Christ to enter every earthly place and moment, from awkward diner conversations to the chemistry lab, from bathroom chats to board rooms.

Recently, this same friend was telling me about a new blog in the online journal of the "Washington Post." It seeks to offer a non-partisan peek at what the author calls the unregulated “faith and politics industry.” This watchdogging is necessary because, as the author explains, “When dealing with faith and politics few things do violence to our (already limited) powers of impartiality like our own faith and our own politics.”

These words hit me as familiar. Such is the tenor I hear from so many around me, not just about the “faith and politics industry” but about everything. Faith of any kind is intrinsically assumed to lead its possessor outside the realm of objective reality, which, it is also assumed, is solely limited to that which is dealt with by the so-called ‘natural-sciences.’ The clouds between heaven and earth are impermeable and permanent, and anyone who thinks there’s an opening between the two might be biased at best or scary at worst.

But though familiar, such a perspective strikes me as fundamentally sad. Maybe it’s because I know that as we meandered through our respective, half-eaten garden omelet and club sandwich, my friend and I needed (and still need) far more divine objectivity than the natural-sciences (which can certainly help) could ever provide. Maybe it’s because I know that when policy decisions are made or presidents are elected, we all need far more wisdom, perspective, and strength than any one of us, no matter how expert, can possess. Or maybe it’s because I know that the object of my faith, Jesus, gives real hope that we in our partial, earthly perspectives might be shaped by the bigger, divine objectivity of heaven—a heaven where, as Jesus reveals, justice, truth, compassion, wisdom, and mercy find their source. I think the blogger’s perspective and those like his sadden me so deeply because I hate to see the possibility of such real hope consistently dismissed.

The truth is, like the blogger and presumably many others, I want a life and vision shaped by as much Reality as possible. Therefore, I’m going to risk placing my hope in Jesus’ conviction: God’s divinely objective and decidedly good will can be worked out on earth as it is in heaven. The clouds can be pushed back. And if it’s true in the diner, why not in the chemistry lab, the bathroom or board room?