I remember the day a wall of colorful plastic beads made heaven seem so much closer. I was wandering through the jewelry making section of a local arts and crafts store. I turned the corner and there, along one whole side of an aisle, were hundreds of strands of beads in every color and shade I could imagine. The hues were brilliant and I was awestruck.
And then an odd thing happened.
It was as if the veil between earth and heaven became nearly transparent and I sensed the Lord saying, “If you think that’s beautiful, you just wait until you see what I’ve got waiting for you. You haven’t seen anything yet!”
It seems that the older I get and the more believing loved ones pass on, the closer heaven seems as well.
If we are young and healthy, and blessed enough to be unacquainted with tragedy, loss, and sorrow, we simply relish life and plan for the future. Death and the afterlife seem distant and almost mythical–even if we believe that what the Bible says about heaven and how to get there is true.
It was God’s plan from the beginning for us to walk and live in intimate spiritual and emotional companionship with Him as His unconditionally beloved children, in a perfect world free of pain, evil, and death. He wanted us to freely choose to love and obey Him—a decision that would maintain the utopia that was His creation.
But having only one option is not a real choice. The antithesis of good, the opposite of obedience, needs to exist. Choose trust and obedience and enjoy abundant life. Or chose rebellion and reap the innate consequences of evil: Death and separation from a loving God and all that is light and pure and good.
Man’s choice broke God’s heart and brought upon the world heartache, death, and evil as we know it now.
But the powerful, tenacious love of God sent Jesus to suffer the just punishment for our sins. We now can enjoy a restored relationship with the Father and secure our future destination—our homecoming.
I have always enjoyed coming home. I’ve visited developing nations on mission trips for as long as six weeks at a time. I struggled to immerse myself in the experiences and the surroundings without comparison to my comfortable life in the U.S. But by the time the trips came to a close, I craved American food, the clothes in my own closet and the comfort of my own bed. And I looked forward to going HOME to my friends and family.
Our lives here on this sinful earth will be over someday as well. The pain and hardships will pass. Earth’s greatest joys and most magnificent beauty, cannot begin to compare to the breathtaking glories of heaven. The trials of old age, loss of loved ones and other troubles are buffered when we anticipate being together where we will never face separation or suffering again. Romans 8:18 says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (this present life) are not worth being compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us and for us and conferred on us!” Amplified Bible
My aunts had a horse and buggy Mennonite friend whose elderly mother was dying. The mother had been paralyzed by a stroke for some time and unable to sit up on her own. As she was passing away, she suddenly sat up in her bed, unaided, and declared, “Oh—es gooked so shae.” She was primarily a speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch but translated, she was saying, “Oh—it looks so beautiful.”
There have been days I’ve wished for an immediate translation to heaven yet was afraid to wish for it too heartily lest God take me seriously and arrange for it. There are other days I look at the cancer that has plagued both sides of my extended family and has invaded my body twice, and beg God for many more years to live and serve Him.
Whenever and however I die, I pray that I will keep my eyes on the Savior and die with “joy unspeakable and full of glory,” knowing that I haven’t seen anything yet!
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