Nearly two weeks ago, my youngest son came home sick after serving as staff at a weeklong church camp. When his fever crept up into unnatural numbers, the doctor confirmed the unpleasant reality: the flu, a summertime strain for which we hadn’t been inoculated.
“You’ll come down with seven deadly diseases,” my oldest son prophesied as he looked at me almost accusingly.
“Gee, thanks,” I said, irritated at the reminder that my earthly temple is less sturdy than some. But to be safe, my doctor immediately phoned in a round of antiviral medication. And I waited. A whole 72 hours. Then it hit.
Well, let’s just say my son was wrong. It was only two deadly diseases, but two that have left me so heavenly minded that I’ve been of no earthly good.
Have you ever said something to the effect of, “I feel like death”? Freeze frame that notion, and you have my life over the past couple of weeks. Except that I really meant it. For one of the first times, I encountered head-on the fragility of this life and the certainty that someday – and that someday could be imminent – something would kill me, unless the Lord returns first.
And so I began to ask myself, “If I were to die now, am I ready? Have I fulfilled the purpose for which the Lord put me here? Will my family be okay? Do I even know what to expect in heaven? What will I really do there?”
Within a couple of days, as the clouds within my lungs and brain began to part intermittently, a familiar blue compact pulled up in my driveway. It was that library guy, the one my dogs always snarl at with such vengeance that I can never open the door to thank him. And he brought me a copy of Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven.
It’s a nearly 500-page treatise of biblical doctrine that lays out what we can expect in heaven – first the intermediate heaven and then the New Earth, which will be established once the heavens and the earth are destroyed and restored to their full unstained glory.
Heaven, as Alcorn describes based upon his extensive search of the Scriptures, will be more than the interminable church service most of us have been told to expect. Heaven will be the ultimate fulfillment of God’s glory and the ultimate fulfillment of our potential. Corruption, ambition, greed, covetousness, death, decay, jealousy, hatred – they will be all be vanquished. Left in their place will be perfect peace, perfect pleasure, perfect fellowship and perfect function.
Alcorn assures me I’ll be a more prolific writer and a more accomplished musician in my resurrected state. I will continue to relate – though without sin – to those people I’ve loved throughout my life. In other words, there will still be me – more of me in the sense of my gifts and talents, less of me in the sense of my sinful self being swallowed up in Christ’s perfection.
The New Earth will bring unending joys – uncorrupted landscapes, unbridled beauty, uninterrupted participation through work, rest and recreation in a perfect world. Death will have lost its sting. I’m going to be a very busy girl.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ – 1 Corinthians 15:54-55
I really wish I could thank the library guy in the blue compact. And I wish I could thank Randy Alcorn for helping this longtime Bible student get her head around what I really believe awaits me in eternity. But most of all, I really want to thank God up front for that glorified body He’s fixing up for me and for that wonderful world I’ll get to enjoy forever. Hope to see you there.
This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. – John 17:3
The library guy’s name, it turns out, is Scott, and I finally did get to thank him – though he seems pretty convinced my dogs will eat him alive if I open the door to him.