My greatest fear about eternal life is boredom. I know, it should have something to do with whether or not claiming to be Jesus' Annoying Henchman is a way to get me sent to the eternal tanning salon, but it isn't. Because I am a Calvinist, and I'm okay...I know where I'm going on judgment day...
But my image of heaven has never been thoroughly thought through, more of an impression really, that of a eternal tranquility, a forever 70 degree day when the sun is just perfect and the humidity is low and God has forever banished the pollen to the nether reaches. Boring as watching paint dry...but hopefully in a really comfy hammock in a pristine back yard that never needs mowing.
Today, I was driving back from a conference through Eastern Pennsylvania. My radio choices were a variety of popular music stations or Christian talk. I am a denizen of the tri-state area. Christian talk isn't usually my first choice, being a pastor and all, but I got this one pastor on a station out of Lancaster who was given an interesting question.
"What is your favorite feeling?"
Doing 65 on Route 78 munching on slightly stale trail mix wasn't mine, so I kept listening for a better answer.
The radio preacher's answer was a feeling of 'accomplishment', like finishing the last thing on a 'to do' list (he confessed to a type 'a' personality), but just that sense you get when you've done something well and good.
Now for something completely different, 9/11. I was at a police chaplain's conference where, in this tenth anniversary year of 9/11/01, the presenter showed a brief remembrance of the event. It rips my guts out to this very day.
What does this have to do with heaven? It is not so much about heaven as it is about 'accomplishment'. I listened to guys who spent months at Ground Zero, at the dump site on Staten Island, with the First Responders, with the Union guys who did the recovery and repair, some of whom are feeling the health effects today. And I can only try to experience their sense of accomplishment vicariously, on the edge. I did my bit, but that pales.
The accomplishment of those guys as chaplains, those First Responders, those workers on the sites in NYC, Washington, and Pennsylvania, those leaders of our nation on every level, those people of our nation and around the world, who opened their hearts and minds and accomplished a task of love and grace and caring for God and neighbor, that's the stuff of heaven.
But the real joy of heaven is that we will feel that sense of accomplishment without having to live through the earthbound hell of what real sin can do to us.
We can do for others every day of our lives, we don't need stress and crisis to motivate us, but it gets old after awhile. That is the infection of sin in our attempts to live as Jesus would want us to. Then a real hellstorm comes and, by the grace of God, we rise to the occasion, rise HIGHER than the occasion, and we overcome.
We did it after 9/11, we did it after Hurricane Katrina, we are doing it two years after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But it is a window of time, between 12 and 24 months, before the wave of accomplishment begins to subside.
Now imagine a place where the wave of accomplishment never subsides and we don't need sinful events to trigger a sense of accomplishment in the kind of life we should be living every day. If you can put yourself in that place, I do believe you can taste the edge of heaven.
2 comments:
Interesting question, but not one I have thought about in a long, long time. Yeah, I used to think heaven was just sitting around singing hymns in the clouds all day. That could get boring quickly.
But isn't eternal life all about the transforming of creation into what it was originally intended to be? We will enjoy the things we enjoy now, but we will all be in an open and transparent relationship with God and there will be no more sin or death.
Do you enjoy lying on the floor with your cat perched on your belly purring while you scratch him behind his ears? That's a foretaste of heaven. Do you enjoy hiking along a trail seeing beautiful scenery, hearing the river roar by, and smelling the pine trees? That's a foretaste of heaven. Do you get goosebumps on Easter or Christmas hearing beloved seasonal hymns sung and played in church? That's a foretaste of heaven.
I don't think that heaven is like an eternal retirement where we don't actually get old, but we get to spend the rest of our lives acting like we are. Rather, I think that heaven will be a place where we all live life to the fullest in transformed bodies and a transformed creation.
On a somewhat related note, something that has helped me a lot in thinking of heaven vs. hell, salvation vs. not has to do with this thought. A huge chunk of American Protestantism would appear to teach that life here on earth is some sort of cosmic test, and the last Judgment will be the grading of this test. If we pass the test, we move on to heaven as our reward. If we fail, then we go to hell as our eternal punishment. Thus, you could imagine somebody looking out from heaven over the Great Chasm to Hell and shouting out "Heh, sucker, told ya ya should have had faith!" But I think that this is very wrong-headed.
Eternal life really begins now, and we set the course of our eternal life now. We either choose to live in a relationship with God or we choose to live apart. After death we just continue in the direction we have set for ourselves. Heaven, then, is eternal life lived in relationship with God, and He promises to transform and purify His Creation (including us) to remove sin and death. Hell is eternal life lived not in relationship with God with all the consequences of that.
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