There is no doubt that the more that I read and think about
heaven, the more fantastic it seems to be. There are many books around with
testimonies of God’s amazing intervention in people’s lives in the form of
miracles and some of these have involved people being given glimpses of heaven.
This not only encourages the individual but also us, the reader.
Naturally everyone’s experience is different but all of them
are incredible and involve wonderful things. Heaven is indeed a wonderful place
and one common theme seems to be that it is completely pervaded by light. One
account that I read involved a man whose son had been tragically killed at an
early age. He was devastated but God took him to heaven to see his son. He
describes this incredible but not blinding light that emanated from everything. There was light and life everywhere which is
not surprising as the Bible is full of references to God being light and
bringing light and life to the world.
However, whenever you start to talk to people about heaven, they
think you are being morbid. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are
going to spend eternity in heaven, if we have given our hearts and lives to the
Lord Jesus Christ and it is a wonderful thought that we will be with him
forever in this incredible place that he has prepared for his people.
I often wonder, especially around this Easter time, why the
disciples did not understand or take onboard what Jesus was saying to them
about being crucified and raised from the dead.
No one comprehended this though Jesus told them at least five times.. No
one was waiting for the resurrection and indeed the disciples had great
difficulty believing it until Jesus came and stood amongst them with his nail
scarred hands and feet. Was there a veil over their eyes? Was the truth
deliberately hidden from them or were they just like us, pushing an unpleasant
thought under the carpet?
Dying is so full of negative emotions that in the west at
least, no one wants to talk about it. Our eyes are earth bound instead of
heaven gazing. However, we are told to ‘set our minds on things above not on
earthly things (Colossians 3: 2). It is not bad luck to think about heaven
and dying but a realistic and exciting prospect even if we do not want it to
happen today! We can have the attitude that there is so much to live for here
on earth that we don’t need to think about heaven.
The truth is that everything we do here affects our heavenly
experience. Our life here is a preparation for our heavenly eternal life. I
believe that getting a realisation that our earthly life is but a blip before
the main event of eternity in heaven helps us live much more effectively here
on earth.
Christians should be excited about their eternal prospects. Let’s
talk positively about heaven and how to get there. The world needs to know and
God has chosen us to continue the work started by the disciples to tell the
world that Jesus is the resurrection and has made the way for each one of us to
spend eternity with him in the incredible, amazing place called heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment