Sunday Reflection–Heavenly Thoughts

Back in the summer of last year our oldest son, Wade Daniel, told us about a book he had just read – “Heaven” – by Randy Alcorn.  He highly recommended it to us.

We trust our son’s judgment because he’s a good Christian man, husband and father and knows more about Scripture than I ever will.

Betty read the book first and then it set in my ‘to read’ stack for several months.

I have to admit, I first decided to read “Heaven” after I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Knowing you have cancer brings home the reality that I have a limited time on this earth.  And that reality opens the mind to wonder if this is all there is or is there more after this life is over? Blessedly, it appears my cancer was contained to the prostate and the surgery to remove it will perhaps give me more years.

Once I started to read “Heaven” it gave me a new perspective not only on the life to come, but also on the life I’m living on this earth now.

Alcorn’s thesis is the church has often promoted an incorrect vision of heaven, or promoted no vision of heaven at all, and completely ignores what God has to say about the new earth.  His premise is the incorrect vision is that heaven is purely an eternal, spiritual existence.  And, once we gain this ‘eternal’ existence, we will leave behind every thing from this earthly existence.

He lays out a pretty good case that this is totally wrong – according to what God says about heaven and the new earth.

I will be the first to admit that I have thought little about heaven until recently for the reason stated above.  Reading this book has completely changed what little vision of heaven that I might have had before.

If you forced me to describe heaven I would probably have said something along the line of “we will all be one with Christ and worship of God will be all we do.”  Sounds good and spiritual, but my eyes have been opened that scripture says something more.

I need to study more, but, based on Alcorn’s scriptural basis, heaven and the new earth sound a whole lot more exciting than anything I have read or heard before – and certainly what little I have thought about heaven before.  There has been an awakening within me of a longing for a home beyond this one, and perhaps one that resurrects, contains and expands all the good things of this present earth.

What is heaven like?  What will we be like?  What we will do?  What will our relationships be?  What will we see, smell, taste?  Will there be food, drink, fun, excitement, challenges, hobbies, work, days, nights, sun, moon, oceans, weather, animals (especially horses), arts, crafts, technology, and travel in heaven and the new earth?  Will there be different cultures, different races, different nations, and different languages?  If these exist in heaven and the new earth, how will they relate to our worship of God?

Alcorn’s book, “Heaven” tackles these questions and more.

John wrote these words near the end of the Bible:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying out in pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”  Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”  (Revelation 21:1, 3-5)

C. S. Lewis often refers to our time on this earth as a Shadowland.  Our life and this earth are but shadows of the reality we will find in heaven and the new earth.  Our desire to explore, our love for beauty and creation (both God’s and man’s), our love for each other, our joy in our children and our animals – these and more are all part of God’s design in us and create a longing for something just beyond what we can know and experience now.

We often mistake other things for this longing – power, sex, money, drugs, approval, and on and on – but our real, God-created longing is to be in our real home with him.

Lewis writes about the longing for this home, this new earth in the Narnia series as Aslan’s country.  In the “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the valiant mouse Reepicheep has a longing for his greatest adventure – to someday go to Aslan’s country.  He talks of a poem he learned as a child:

Where sky and water meet,
Where the waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reebicheep,
To find all you seek,
There is the utter East.

Reebicheep acknowledges that he does not know what the poem means, but “the spell of it has been on me all my life.”

Then he speaks of his utter abandonment of his life to his cause of seeking Aslan’s country:  “While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader.  When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle (small boat).  When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws.  And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise…”

“I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise…”  What a great expression of faith that even if he dies before finishing his quest, he will keep his eyes pointed towards that country which has filled his heart and mind to the very end.

Reading “Heaven” has expanded my mind and my horizons and awakened something within me.  If, like me, you have been fuzzy or unsure about this life and the life to come, I recommend “Heaven.”