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For Heaven’s Sake

“To die would be an awfully great adventure” – Peter Pan

I sat at the bedside of a dying woman that day. She had asked for a pastor to come to see her, and knew her time was at an end. After a few pleasantries, I asked her what she wanted to talk about. 

Mostly, she wanted to talk about her regrets.

She was sorry she’d wasted so much time. Sad about things she hadn’t done, but just as sad for a few things she had done. Though she trusted in Jesus, she was focused with a lifetime of missed opportunities. 

As I listened, I felt more like a priest hearing a confession than a pastor. Stumbling around for how to respond, I felt God prompting me, “Tell her the best part. Tell her what I’ve got planned for her!”

So, I did something I rarely do when counseling people. I changed the subject. I pivoted from her regrets to the place where she’d soon be arriving –  heaven. 

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. 

“You were trying to calm her fears with fairy tales. Say anything just to give the old girl some peace, right pastor?

Wrong. You see, I don’t believe Heaven’s just wishful thinking. I believe it’s more real than the world we now inhabit. And I believe heaven is logical. In fact, it’s the only logical response to a world out of control and filled with injustice. Without heaven, that dear lady’s whole life amounts to little more than those regrets she was fixated on.

If there’s no heaven, a million wrongs will never be made right. 

If there’s no heaven, the powerful have won and the meek inherit nothing. Might truly makes right, because there’s no one eternal courtroom to judge and punish the bullies of this world.

If there’s no heaven, countless children enduring endless days of abuse and dying at the hands of ruthless adults will never know the loving protection of a “good Father”.

If there’s no heaven, all our existence is pointless, meaningless. Because then, once your dead, there’s nothing. And everyone you’ve ever tried to help will eventually die as well. So if the end is nothingness, why save a life? You’re just prolonging the inevitable. No good we do will ever live past the next couple of generations.

No, heaven’s not a fairy tale. But what most of what nonbelievers say on the subject of death is where you’ll really find the wishful thinking! 

“Grandma will live on in our hearts”. 

“At least they’re at peace now”.

Sorry, but I don’t want to just “live on in someone’s heart”. I won’t REALLY be there, will I? That’s just bad poetry, like an existential Hallmark card. We’re either truly alive or we’re dead. The “memory of me” and the “real me” are two completely different things. And if all that’s left is a memory living on in people who’ll soon die as well, what’s the point? 

If death means we no longer exist, how can anyone truly “be at peace” with that idea, unless they’re in denial?

But…what if the reason we can’t imagine no longer existing is because we know instinctively there’s more to a person than just the material? What if we know there’s something more that must live on somewhere? And what if everything in this life were merely the “boot camp” for the real adventure to come?

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11

Nothing in this life is complete without heaven, so much so that God has “put it in our hearts”.

I love the way C.S. Lewis encouraged a sick friend as he himself faced death:

“Thing of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the gardener’s good time, up into the real world, a real awakening. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming. It is nearer now than when I began this letter.”⁠1

Imagine that! A world more vivid and dynamic than this present one. A world so wonderful it would make any regrets about this world seem insignificant.

This life is not the end, only the beginning. That’s why I shared heaven with this woman full of regrets, because her adventures we truly just beginning, not ending. 

What we were created for is a yet undiscovered country as Shakespeare put it, where we’ll finally see with our eyes the things for which our hearts always yearned. Things for which we hoped that seemed so wonderful, we dared not expect them for fear of being fools.

Few answers we seek are found in this life. Most things that really matter are not answered until the next…

Pray for healing now…but healing here will eventually vanish. Why?

  • Because eternal healing doesn’t come in this world, but the next.

Pray for goodness now…but complete holiness will evade us here. Why?

  • Because we’ll never be completely like Jesus in this world, but only when we see Him face to face in the next.

Pray for justice now…but justice will often go unserved here. Why?

  • Because only God can right all the wrongs and repay justly. Only He is a worthy Judge.

But in the hereafter, we’ll find the “endless summer” we lost as children. Remember playing outside as a child, losing all sense of time? Only the streetlights flashing on reminded us to go home. But in that land of endless day, we’ll play in a sunlight that will never set. And we’ll never need to run home, become home is where we’ll be.

“There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.” – Rev. 22:5

And the wonders of heaven will hit us like a sugar rush from a trip to the ice cream truck on a hot summer day.

My friend died within 5 days of our conversation. It’s still hard to image how someone you just spoke with can be gone so suddenly. But today, I know she’s only “gone” from this earth. She never stopped existing, only breathing.

Right now, she’s in heaven. The streets she’s walking are somewhat similar to the one she’s left behind. Except in this new world for which we were created, the colors themselves are so brilliant that the beauty around her brings tears.

Today, she is Dorothy just after her house touches down in Oz. She left this earth behind, just like Dorothy walked out of Aunt Em’s sepia-toned house. In death, she opened the door to a Technicolor world of delight. And standing amidst the wonder of it all, she is a child once again.

In fact in heaven, we’ll all be children again. We’ve never truly felt comfortable in the self-confident trappings of adulthood anyway. Our faces and bodies have changed over the year, but strangers stare back at us from the mirror.

But inside, we’re still only 7. That intuition is actually wisdom. Because no matter how old we are, we’re still just children compared to God.

Now reunited with our Father, we’ll be held and loved and treasured and thrown into the air again in delight. We’ll be perfectly and fully loved by the One who sacrificed everything to bring us back home. All who’re in Him will be safe, and perfect, and whole, and wise…yet see all things anew with the wonder of a child’s eyes.

We’ll finally look into the face of the One who made us. At that moment, every longing of our monotonous, dreary, world-weary existence will be satisfied in His countenance.

And in the reflection of His eyes we’ll see ourselves laughing…no, even giggling with joy.

And that joy will last forever and ever, world without end…

Amen.

anImage_6.tiff

1 Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950-1963 (San Francisco: Harper, 2007), p. 1434

1 Comment

  • Sandrea
    Posted September 17, 2020 at 1:23 pm

    You are just way too multi-talented.

    0Likes Reply

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Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.