No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared
for those who love him.
1 Corinthians 2:9
What is heaven like? I once heard that describing heaven to a person is like trying to describe Disneyland to a dog.
“Fido, there’s these giant tea cups, and you climb in and go round and round.” (My Fido – actually named Lucy – would look at me for a few seconds and when she realized that I wasn’t going to feed her, would go promptly back to sleep.)
Similarly, many humans fall asleep (or grow bored and inattentive) when people talk about the things of God. Why? Because they simply can’t “conceive[ of] what God has prepared” for them.
Well, what God has prepared for us – including heaven – has certainly gotten my attention. Why? Because death has gotten my attention. As a pastor I’ve done a gross number of funerals.
“A gross,” by the way, is the number 144 and that’s probably about how many funerals I’ve done in my career. Meaning … Death has definitely gotten my attention. In 2016, I did a dozen funerals. 2017 held fewer (but bigger) funerals. And as today is the day that the church commemorates the faithful departed – All Saints’ Day – my mind is on lots of friends I’ve lost and lots of friends that still grieve.
“But,” said the Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”
Question: Do you grieve with or without hope? Wait! In the moment (and often for the first year) grieving people get their breath knocked out by a significant death. Don’t judge your faith (or anyone else’s) when the grieving relative can’t even breathe! Grief is normal. It just shows that you loved.
But … it’s wise to contemplate life and death before a major grief kicks you in the teeth. And it inevitably will.
I have an advantage. I deal with death all of the time. And I can say with confidence that every funeral has helped me be even more confident about heaven. Why? Because I keep seeing God show up! I’m becoming more and more like the Saint that Paul yearns for us to become. He says, “we do not want you to … grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so … God will bring with him those who have died.”
Is that your hope?!
Well, that’s part one of my hope. Part two is that I’d like to meet him even sooner. That’s the Apostle’s hope too. In fact, this passage in 1 Thessalonians 4 continues: “[Then] the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven … 17 then we who are alive … will be caught up in the clouds … to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who is increasingly
confident that any day
is a good day to meet the Lord!
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.[i] 15 For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.[j] 16 For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
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