8. Better By Far
EARECKSON HOME
MARYLAND
FEBRUARY 1967
I looked forward to Steve coming all day. Now the evening is over and everything is still. Winter still. Moonlight still. Midnight still.
My friend and I spent another evening sitting by a snapping, popping, cherry-wood fire in the fireplace. It smelled wonderful.
As at other times, Steve brought his Bible. He read some and we talked. When the subject turned to heaven, it really got my attention. Since I was a little girl I’ve wondered about it. We used to sing,
This world is not my home,
I’m just a-passin’ through;
my treasures are laid up,
somewhere beyond the blue.
I’ve never really had any trouble believing in a heaven, but it all seemed so vague to me. Somewhere beyond the blue. Everyone wants to go there, but where is it? What does it look like? Who is there, what do they wear, and what do they do?
Steve began to read to me from 1 Corinthians 15—the part about the new bodies we will have after we leave this world. Again, he had my full attention. He called that future body a “glorified body,” and he began to think out loud about all the amazing things an immortal body could do. Run without ever getting tired. Enjoy endless daylight without needing sleep. Move through walls and from place to place, as Jesus did after He rose from the dead. And who knows? Maybe even fly.
To me, the best thought was that I would no longer be paralyzed. If I had just that much and no more, it would be enough. To walk away from my wheelchair forever. To never again have to depend on others for everything I need and everything I do. I couldn’t help imagining along with him—thinking about all the things I would be able to do with new hands, new arms, and new legs. Flying? Who cares. Walking through walls. Who needs to? Running for a thousand years and never stopping to catch your breath? Fine. But what’s the point?
I would be happy just to walk a few steps to the window, pull back the curtain, and look out at the falling snow. Or brush my hair. Or peel an orange. And then … later … maybe I could sprint across an open field, scale a few rocks, or skip through a meadow.
For a few minutes, as Steve kept reading to me in that gentle, earnest voice of his, I got caught up in something like a vision. My heart filled with longing. Just for a moment—even though I was stuck in my wheelchair and unable to move—I remembered what it felt like to be really free.
Steve could see what was happening to me, bless his heart, and kept reading more passages. As he turned to one more description in the book of Revelation, I couldn’t wait to read all about this future God was reserving for us.
But that’s when it all began to unravel for me.
Steve read:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . (Revelation 21:1)
Yes, I could buy that. Everyone knows this old planet of ours is in need of repair.
… For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. . . . (Revelation 21:2)
That stopped me. The whole earth is going to pass away? There are lots of things I like about earth. Chili dogs with cheese. The NBA playoffs. Bridal Veil Falls at Yosemite National Park. Horses galloping through a wide green field. Starry summer nights. And it’s all going away? To be replaced by what?
And there was no longer any sea. . . .
No sea? No ocean? No smell of salt in the air? No splashing in the breakers? No digging toes into the warm sand?
I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
No ocean beaches? No sunrise over Chesapeake Bay? No sand dunes? No Great Barrier Reef? No wheat fields or sequoia trees or daffodils? And really, who cares about some new big city coming out of the sky! I hate cities—even if they are holy. Who wants some monster housing project in the center of heaven? Some people might get excited about a continent-sized gated community with walls two hundred feet thick, but not me.
Steve sensed my disappointment and looked up from his Bible, puzzled. That moment of feeling free and excited about the future vanished like a puff of smoke up the chimney. The plain truth is, I’m stuck in a wheelchair, paralyzed, for the rest of this life on earth, however long that may be. And after that? Well, maybe heaven won’t be so great, either.
The more he read, the more it turned me off. It was like some bad description from a Triple-A tour book. Pearl-studded gates. Gold asphalt. No need to eat, so I guess that means no food. No roast turkey. No mashed potatoes and gravy. No pecan pie. No fresh-brewed coffee. No need to sleep, so there are no beds—or crisp sheets or downy pillows or hand-stitched quilts. No sunsets, no full moons, no summer twilights, no starry nights. And oh, by the way: no marriage, either, so no sex.
Hey, but don’t miss the architectural wonder that is the New Jerusalem, that striking city of the future. Twelve foundations. Twelve gates, each gate made of a single pearl.
Welcome to ruby slippers and Somewhere-Over-the-Rainbow.
Heaven is Oz.
Somehow, all the light and joy seemed to be pulled right out of the living room. The fire still danced on the hearth, but I felt cold. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Steve, because I couldn’t seem to stop the spiral.
He tried to change the tone. He flipped to Jesus’ words in John 14 (verses 1–4).
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
I know what he was trying to do. He was trying to excite my imagination again. Trying to recapture the wonder I had felt. But it was like trying to catch a sun ray in a Mason jar.
“Just think of it Joni,” he said. “If Jesus is presently preparing heaven, it must be out-of-sight. It only took Him seven days to create the earth and the whole universe, and hey, He’s had almost two thousand years to work on our rooms in His Father’s house!”
It was a clever maneuver, but it dive-bombed. You can get bored in the most beautiful hotel room in just a few days. What would it be like to be bored for eternity?
To give him credit, he backed up and took another run at it. He tried explaining that all this stuff about mansions and rooms was probably allegorical anyway. And that was supposed to comfort me somehow? After a few more tries, he smiled a sad smile at me, closed his Bible, fished for something encouraging to say, and finally said good-night.
Now it’s late at night, and I’m lying in my bed looking at the pale light from a full moon flooding through my bedroom window. I want to throw back the covers, get out of bed, and look, but there’s no way. I can’t. But I know the moon must be shining on the wintry fields outside, tracing the maple branches in silver, casting faint shadows on the snow.
Moonlight on a paralyzed girl’s bed. Well, that’s something. Something I can at least see. Thoughts of heaven had teased my heart and danced just out of reach for a moment or two, but now it all seems a million miles away.
FORTY YEARS LATER
AGOURA HILLS, CALIFORNIA
It doesn’t now.
Heaven doesn’t seem far away at all. I’m countless miles and forty-one years closer. It may be over the next hill or around the next bend in the road or maybe a little farther than that.
But it’s close.
Sometimes I think I can see the glow—like when you’re driving out in the desert late at night, and see the lights of a city miles over the horizon.
Heaven will not only be more than we can imagine, the “more”will go on forever. It will be timeless.
It has to be.
Joy flows from God, God is eternal; therefore, so is joy. You instinctively know this when you are gripped by a timeless moment, an experience so precious, so perfect, you wish it could last forever.
One early summer morning my sister Jay and I drove down to the little Maryland farming community of Sykesville to visit Grandma Clark. She wasn’t really my grandmother. She and Jay had become friends at their tiny stone church on top of the hill, and we had been invited to her big farmhouse for tea. I wheeled into the kitchen and was greeted by the aroma of a hot cake from the oven. Grandma had placed white crisp linen on a table by an open window. A breeze lifted lace curtains and wafted in the scent of hydrangeas.
Jay and I sipped tea from delicate cups. My eyes followed Grandma Clark. She leaned back, smoothed the tablecloth with her hand, and spoke of heaven in grand and wistful terms.
A gust of wind suddenly whipped the curtains, tossing her gray hair. She held up her hand, smiling and squinting against the stiff breeze. Whooosh! It eddied around the table, dizzying and lifting our spirits.
The moment was delightfully strange.
I don’t know how else to say it, but I think all of us knew that something unusual—and wonderful—had just occurred. It was something more sensed than spoken.
But as quickly as it came, it vanished, settling us back down and becoming timeless, leaving in its wake peace and joy. I can still taste the cakes and tea, inhale the fragrance of spring flowers, see the curtains snap, and dapples of sun dance on the tablecloth.
Moments like these remind us of some other time or place. We say the same of childhood memories: lazy, late afternoons, licking Popsicles on the back step, listening to a lawnmower up the street, and feeling a breeze cool our brow. Or running out the screen door after dinner to catch fireflies. Or by a campfire, hugging our knees, watching the sparks fly upward, becoming stars. If we could be transported back, we’d discover that even as children we felt the same nostalgia, the “remembering” of places and times where we have never been.
It’s an indefinable longing, soul-deep. It’s a yearning, as C. S. Lewis put it, to pass through the beauty and reach the other side. And in those timeless moments, we hear a whisper without words … but the meaning is something like this: One day you will bathe in peace like this … satisfaction will shower you … this joy will last forever.
This is what we as children feel. It’s another hint of heaven, like choosing the happiest point in your life and having time stand still.
I’ll admit, I’ve been thinking more and more these days about the life waiting for me on the Other Side. About going home. About departing to be with my Lord.
That tiny flicker of a vision I experienced so many years ago as I sat by the fireside with Steve Estes is now full-bloom. I want to go—as much as I’ve wanted to go anywhere in all of my life, in all of my memory.
I know what you’re thinking. What’s up with Joni? Maybe it sounds morbid to you. Like a death wish. I don’t mean that at all. My health is good enough; I love my husband, my colleagues, my friends, my home, ten thousand lovely places on this earth; and I’m more passionate than ever about the work God has given me to do across the world. There’s no funk, no depression. Physical paralysis hasn’t paralyzed my spirit for many years.
But there is this …
I’ve lived with quadriplegia for decades, and being in a wheelchair that long, well, sometimes I wonder. I wonder how much more time I have on earth before I get the call from the Lord to come home.
The call.
Will it be a simple word … “Joni, come,” or will it be a shout? Will it be serious, like a whisper in a cathedral, or full of merriment and joy? Will it be a journey, or will an angel simply take me by the hand and draw me through an open window into the sweet morning air of heaven?
Just thinking these thoughts stirs a longing in the deepest places of my spirit, and truly, I am comforted by that anticipation.
When I was still a teenager, trying to come to terms with the thought of a lifetime in a wheelchair, there were times when the thought of heaven wasn’t much comfort at all. I would take the specific descriptions that I saw in the Scriptures—which are really all we have—and try to picture myself there. I so much wanted it to be a place like all the dearest and most well-loved places I have known on earth.
I wanted to put on jeans and a flannel shirt, walk on crunchy fall leaves, and smell wet fields and wood smoke on the cool autumn breeze.
I wanted to ride a horse along a snow-covered country lane.
I wanted to pick wild roses along the wooden fence in the back pasture.
I wanted to see the Milky Way on a crisp December night, far away from the glare of city lights.
Heaven? It all seemed so distant and ethereal, the images wispy and thin. Something between a Sunday school paper sketch and a half-remembered dream. I needed a vision of the next life desperately because the thought of an earthly life of paralysis stretching out before me for years and years was almost more than my soul could bear.
I needed to be excited about heaven, just to keep my sanity, just to give my mind somewhere to go to escape the prison of my broken body. But who could get worked up over some misty Twilight Zone where birds incessantly chirp, angels bounce from cloud to cloud, and eternal organ music (heavy with tremolo) fills every corner of paradise?
We are victimized by what people have said, spoken, illustrated, or sang about the Coming Age. We’ve seen the magazine cartoons with Saint Peter sitting at a desk in the clouds, guarding a gate. We’ve heard the nineteenth-century gospel songs that make us think of starchy dark suits, shined shoes, proper Sunday dresses, stern faces, and long (eternal) sermons. We’ve seen classic art depictions, with halos, pale, womanly angels, and God with a long white beard.
We’ve been filled up to our eyebrows with clichés, parodies, kitsch, and tedious two-dimensional paintings of a place we’d never even want to visit, let alone live in forever.
I wanted something more. I wanted a place to dream of, hold onto, think about in those long hours of enforced stillness on my bed. To me, it didn’t seem like I was asking for a lot. Maybe just a few snapshots from the other side—grainy, black and white, out of focus, it didn’t matter. Anything that would give me the most basic mental image of a reality so far beyond my reach.
But Scripture gave me images I simply couldn’t process. Harps. Crowns. Rainbow thrones. Big rambling mansions. Fantastic angelic beings with multiple faces, eyes tucked under wings, and wheels within wheels, resounding like thunder. A sea of glass. A river flowing through a temple. An altar with martyred saints underneath. A city the size of Australia dropping out of the sky.
None of it touched my heart.
I think back to those days—so many years ago now—and wish I could bring a new perspective to that young girl in her strange new wheelchair, trying so hard to find her way in an alien, frightening world where everything had changed. Strange as it may sound, I’ve wanted to somehow travel back in time and sit beside her—wheelchair alongside wheelchair—and speak to her, heartbroken and lost as she was.
What would I say? How could I comfort her?
“Joni … you want heaven to be real, and it is. You want it to be a Place, a Destination, home that will remind you of everything you have loved best in this life, and it will be.
“But here is the truth … a ruby, hard-won … the real truth sifted and refined through countless tears, untold hours of prayer, and many years of paralysis. It isn’t thinking about a Place that will lift your heart and make your sorrow easier to bear. It’s a Person. It’s Jesus.
“Heaven isn’t heaven because of what you will do or where you will go. Halos and gold freeways? Set all that aside for now. Heaven will be heaven because He is there. Physically. Visibly. Gloriously. Eternally.
“I know … you need to escape sometimes. To slip away in your thoughts to something other than a routine that seems hurtful and hateful to you. The images of heaven you encounter in the Bible trouble you because you can’t wrap your mind around them. The language is cryptic. You almost have to crack heaven’s hieroglyphics before any of it makes sense. You’re looking for a place where your spirit can rest, but you get lost in the bowls, scrolls, and trumpets of Revelation.
“That’s okay, for now. Someday it will all make sense. For now, just set your thoughts on Jesus. You can’t wrap your mind around Him, either, but He will wrap His arms around you. The more you learn of Him, think of Him, fill your eyes with Him, the more you will find the comfort you crave in your brokenness. He is so impossibly far beyond anything you have ever imagined or conceived Him to be.
“Don’t think of cheesy color plates from children’s Bibles, vacation-Bible-school curriculum, medieval paintings, or stained-glass windows. That would be like mistaking your best friend for a crayon image from a four-year-old. This is the One who created music and starlight, cherries and summer roses, a man’s strong touch and a woman’s laughter, snow-capped mountains and April rain, a baby’s eyelashes and vast planets where no one has walked but angels.
“Consider Him.
“Adore Him.”
I See Heaven Open …
If we’re trying to draw comfort from imagined scenes of heaven—celestial mountains and fields, valleys and vistas—our comfort will be as thin as the limits of our imagination.
That’s because the eyes of our heart are looking in the wrong place. Visions of heavenly cities, no matter how radiant, how stunning will never sustain us in an hour of deep trial. It has to be more. Much more.
It must be a person.
In the book of Acts, before the first stones began to strike the back and arms and face of Stephen, God sent a vision to sustain him in those terrible moments.
The veil between time and eternity was swept aside, like a curtain pushed away from an open window by the wind, and Stephen’s earthly eyes were enabled to see into heaven. How many scenes and vistas from how many corners of heaven might the Holy Spirit have chosen to show this man on the edge of martyrdom? Towering waterfalls? Endless fields of green? Galaxy wide nebula with colors beyond the spectrum?
God could have picked anything.
Instead, He picked the one thing that would fill His servant’s heart with joy beyond anything else—even in the shock and pain of a stoning.
But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55–56)
The last thing Stephen saw on this earth wasn’t on earth at all. It was the Lord Jesus, standing, arms open wide, ready to sweep this first martyr into His embrace. And do you think He had a smile of welcome on His face? I can’t imagine anything else.
If you need a bit more convincing that heaven is more about a Person than a place, then take this test St. Augustine gave his students centuries ago. Imagine Jesus appeared to you and said, “You want heaven? I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you anything and everything you ask. Nothing will be sin. Nothing will be forbidden, and everything will be possible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. Only … you will never see My face.”
Brrr! Do you feel that chill in your soul? Your heart and mind recoil in unison. As a son or daughter of God, your deepest desire—beyond anything else in the world—is to see your Redeemer. Like St. Augustine said of God, “Thou has made us for Thyself, and therefore our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
Yes, your heart’s home is in the heart of God. He has placed within you a yearning for Himself, a desire to know and understand what He is like. Every soul feels the void and the emptiness until it connects with its Maker.
Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in.
Come from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod,
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.
Pleasures and treasures on earth may be sought after and not found, but only God comes with the guarantee that He will be found. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you” (Jeremiah 29:13–14).
More specifically, He will be found in Jesus Christ. God illumines our heart and mind when we sincerely search for the Truth and reveals Jesus, the photo image of the Father who dwells in unapproachable light. Jesus is the source of every longing we’ve ever had about heaven. Jesus is God wearing a human face. He is real and not abstract. He invites us to do what we cannot do with the incomprehensible—He invites us to drink and eat of Him, and “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).
Jesus is sunshine to our heart. Not just to our logic, but our heart. Praise God, we know the answer to our heart’s longing. It’s Jesus!
The disciples of Jesus, at first, weren’t so sure that this Man in their midst would fulfill their deepest longings, so “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ ” (John 14:8–9).
Our longings are satisfied in Him for “the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). We can know God—our Father in heaven—if we know Jesus. And knowing Him, as we would desire to know a Lover, is ecstasy. His invitation to “enter into the joy of the Lord” (Matthew 25:23 paraphrased) is like stepping into a raft and being carried helplessly along a surging current, spilling over and splashing with joy.
I’ll bet Charles Wesley was enraptured when he penned the fourth stanza to his hymn “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”:
Finish then Thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heav’n we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love and praise!
Tears have streamed down my cheeks in church when I’ve sung that last line. Heaven is a place, and also a Person in whom I am lost in wonder, love, and praise.
Better by Far …
In the book of Philippians, Paul was in a Roman prison for his faith in Christ, facing the very real prospect of a quick execution. Not knowing how long he had to live, he wrote these words to the church at Philippi … and to us.
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two:I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. (Philippians 1:21–23)
In the King James Version, Paul says, “I am in a strait betwixt two.” It was a seesaw tug of war in his soul. Paul was being pulled first toward heaven then toward earth, back and forth.
I am torn. . . . I desire to depart and be with Christ….
The Greek word translated “desire” speaks of a strong passion or urge, a growing or swelling emotion. It’s an excitement. A passion. A thought that sweeps you along and almost consumes you.
The word translated “depart” pictures a ship that has been loosed from its moorings, finally free to do what it was destined and designed to do.
Sail.
Yes, he was ready and more than ready to cut loose his anchor and set sail for the destination that waited just beyond his vision and made him homesick for a land he’d never seen. But the apostle wasn’t thinking about a location as much as he was thinking about the best Friend he had ever known in all his years. He wanted to be with Christ. In one sense, the celestial coordinates didn’t really matter. Wherever Jesus was, that would be heaven.
He wanted to depart. He was ready and more than ready to exchange one life for another. Being with Christ, he said, would be better by far. It was no contest. If the door opened, he would leap at the opportunity.
That prospect sustained him. How else could he have lived those years in Roman captivity, whether through house arrest or in the fetid depths of a dungeon? How else could he have written one of the greatest treatises on joy ever penned with iron shackles on his wrists and ankles, and a body so bruised, broken, and scarred from savage beatings?
It wasn’t because he needed a “get away” and fantasized about another place. He wasn’t saying, “Well, there’s a pretty beach on Cyprus that I like, and there’s heaven too.” He wasn’t saying, “I can’t wait to run my hand up and down that smooth gate of pearl and see those heavenly trees bearing fruit by that crystal river.” No, it wasn’t a location that drew him, delighted him, and consumed him. It was the prospect of finding himself wholly in the presence of the One who was life itself to him.
Once in the middle of the day in the middle of a journey in the middle of his life, he had been swept off his mount by a supernova, searing his eyes, blasting the breath from his lungs, and flooding every crease and crevice in his soul. And he would spend the rest of his days seeking, serving, and worshiping the One whose very name is Light.
Earlier in his letter, he wrote, “I am ready for anything through the strength of the one who lives within me” (Philippians 4:13 Phil-lips). He wasn’t drawing strength from some snapshot of heavenly Real Estate, some slick, color brochure of the New Jerusalem—even though he probably had such vivid mental images from his previous visit to “the third heaven.”
It wasn’t any place. It wasn’t any GPS location in the physical universe or the heavenlies.
It was Jesus.
It was the Bright, Morning Star. It was the Son of God. It was the Savior, once humbled, but now in His rightful place in the highest heaven. It was the Weaver of Light, the Source of Beauty, the Wellspring of Music, the Artesian Fountain of truth and joy and justice and peace and laughter and hope and kindness and everything worth having in this old world of ours or the next.
Oh, to be there when my Jesus—yes, He’s mine—steps on to the center stage of the universe to be crowned as King of kings and Lord of lords. It will be His day, His moment, and best of all, His opportunity to turn up the wattage on the Father’s glory. For if anyone, anywhere in the universe still harbors doubt that God was unjust—that He dirtied His hands—by saving sinners like me, Jesus will finally put those doubts to rest. He will show that God didn’t circumvent justice by redeeming people; rather, God wrapped justice in mercy when He sent His precious, perfect Son to die in our place.
It’s all about Jesus.
And I want to be there when the universe falls back on its heels in utter amazement over what Jesus has done! For if it weren’t for Jesus—if He had not gone to the cross—no one would ever see the mercy of God; if it weren’t for Jesus, no one could ever grasp the compassion of God; if it weren’t for Jesus, I dare say God’s most glorious attributes might remain hidden for all of eternity. Oh, I want to be there among the cheering throngs, when we praise and bless God for His mercy and grace!
The apostle Paul wasn’t living in denial as he languished in those rusty chains; he simply adjusted his longings in light of the sufficiency of Christ. Jesus was more than enough whether Paul was “well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:12).
In those early years of my injury, I had been longing for Another Place. A beautiful, unspoiled land where I could go in my mind when the weight of life felt like it was going to crush me. I looked through the Bible for that place, but no description drew me. No biblical sketch drew my heart. I knew that “this world is not my home,” but the next world didn’t seem all that appealing to me, either.
Our hope, once again, is not a what, but a Who. The hope we wait for, our only hope, is the “blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). It is Jesus we’ve travailed all this suffering for—not a slice of celestial Real Estate. Our hope is for the Desire of the Nations, the Healer of Broken Hearts, the Friend of Sinners. True, we are waiting for a party. But more accurately, we are waiting for the Person who will make it a party.
Here is the ruby, hard-won. It wasn’t a vision of a Place that would comfort me. It was the presence of a real Person. Earth is tolerable because of what I can see of Jesus. And heaven will be glorious beyond any description because I will be at His side, walk and talk with Him. And worship at last as I was always meant to worship, but never could.
A Failing Tent
The apostle Paul was a missionary by calling but a tentmaker by trade. During his ministry in Corinth, he stayed with a fellow tentmaker named Aquila. So the two men would ply their craftsmanship in the tent shop during the week, and then Paul would go into the synagogue on Sabbath days and reason with the Jews and Greeks.
Years later, when he was writing to the church at Corinth, he must have been reminded of those days with Aquila, because he wove some tent imagery into his letter. Speaking of the contrast between this earthly life and the life in heaven to come, he wrote:
Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1–4)
When we went beach camping as kids, I thought living in a tent was the ultimate adventure.
Sand on the canvas floor? Who cares! Mosquitoes? Just get out the mosquito netting. Rain? Break out the tarps and pull down the canvas flaps. Dirt? Hey, a little dirt never hurt anyone. Living in a tent (we thought then) was great fun!
Now, many years later, it’s a different story. Ken and I have enjoyed a few camping experiences in our married life, but I can only take it for so long. For some reason, tent camping gets a little more strenuous with each passing year. Sand, mosquitoes, dirt, rain? You can have it, I say to myself after four or five days.
Maybe that’s why Paul the tentmaker likened living in these bodies of ours to occupying a tent. Unless you happen to be a Bedouin out in the Arabian desert, a tent is only meant to be temporary housing. We can only take it for so long. And with each passing year, we find living in these bodies of ours more strenuous than the year before.
Paul says, “We groan.”
And the older we get, the more we do it. Aren’t you glad we won’t always be “groaning and burdened” with these patchwork tents of ours?
When I think along these lines, I’m reminded of Steve Coyle. Steve, who lived in Hawaii, went swimming for an hour each morning. One day a diving accident badly bruised his spinal column. He recovered from that mishap, but just three months later had another accident which left him a quadriplegic. Even so, Steve never complained about his disability. He always managed to work in some words of praise to the Lord in all his conversation.
I wish the story got better from there, but the truth is, Steve then developed cancer. He suffered greatly and, after losing over eighty pounds, went to be with the Lord. How he must have grown weary of his tent!
Shortly before he died, Steve wanted to record some of his thoughts in verse. He entrusted the lines to a nurse friend. Here are the last two stanzas, as he reflects on a tent that was falling apart and near collapse.
I went to Him on bended knees
Begging Him, “Oh Tentmaker please!
Restore this tent I thought would last,
This canvas house that went so fast.”
He looked at me through loving eyes
And merely pointed to the skies.
“Please don’t grieve over some old tent,
Old canvas walls that have been spent
For this mansion that’s been built by Me
Will last you for eternity.”
With that assurance, Steve gladly broke camp and moved on. My tent too is giving way. The pegs are loose in the ground, the cords are frayed, and the tent frame has bent, giving way to long years and rough weather.
Back in the old days, canvas tents were supported by interior wooden tent poles. If you drove somewhere in the wilderness to go camping and then realized you’d left the tent poles at home, you were in for a difficult experience. It’s hard to sleep, eat, and read by lantern light—or do most anything—in a collapsed tent.
Paralysis is something like that. Many survive with it, and life goes on. But it makes everything so difficult. And after awhile, you want to say, “Enough already, let’s just go home!”
As Paul continued his tent metaphor to the church in Corinth, he went on to say: “Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body [this earthly tent] we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We … would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6, 7).
In other words, I’ll live with this old tent, as difficult and painful as it may be, and sustain myself with faith in God. But what would I rather do? I’d rather break camp and go home to Jesus.
Let’s Go Home
Antonin Dvořák’s New World Symphony has been one the most well-loved and often-performed symphonies for years.
If you’re familiar at all with this music, you could quickly identify a repeating musical theme that weaves its way in and out of the Largo movement of Dvořák’s creation. Whenever I hear it, it stirs a longing in my heart. Is it the haunting melody that does it, or is it because the theme was lifted from an old Negro spiritual with heart-tugging lyrics?
Goin’ home, goin’ home, I’m a-goin’ home;
Quiet-like, some still day, I’m jes’ a-goin’ home.
It’s not far, jes’ close by,
Through an open door;
Work all done, care laid by,
Gwine to fear no more.
Mother’s there ’spectin’ me,
Father’s wait in’ too;
All the friends I knew,
All the friends I knew.
Home, I’m goin’ home!
But there is more to the story than that. Dvořák, who left his beloved Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic) in 1892, spent three years in New York City, directing the National Conservatory of Music. And in those years, in the crowded, bustling streets and sidewalks of the big city, he became desperately homesick for his native land. And when those emotions combined with the “homesick-for-heaven” melody of the old spiritual, it became an element of that great work that just seems to embody a longing for home.
Goin’ home.
On some days, I feel as though I might be called Home at any moment.
When I get caught up in that “let’s go home” emotion, it blends in my memory with long-ago days when I used to play in the woods beyond our backyard. As soon as I got home from elementary school, and while Mom was preparing dinner, I would put my things in my room and race out the back door to play with Kathy and a few neighborhood kids. We would call to each other and our shouts would echo through the tall oak trees. Everything echoed—the chatter of birds, the distant clatter of an old lawnmower, the slamming of screen doors. Our play was so much fun that an hour would go by and I’d hardly realize it. I barely noticed the rays of the sinking sun cutting long shadows through the trees.
Kathy and I knew that soon Mother would call us home.
Funny, I rarely took it upon myself to go home unless called. Something in me wanted to hear that call … the sound of Daddy’s or Mom’s voice through cupped hands, shouting my name. No sooner did I hope they’d call when I would hear the familiar ding-ding-a-ling-ding of the dinner bell by the back door.
“Supper’s ready … time to come home!”
It’s odd how I can still hear Mother’s voice. It almost makes me cry; it just about made me cry when I was a child. The echo of the bell … the haunting sound through the woods … the joy about to break open my heart for the love of home, the warmth of family … not to mention fried chicken and mashed potatoes by a glowing fire in the living room. And often during the summer after the table was cleared and dessert was over, we’d sit in the backyard and watch the sun go down.
“There it goes …”
“It’s almost gone … just a little tip of light left.”
Our family would vie for who’d be the last one to see the sun set.
And then we’d wait for the stars to come out, singing hymns and counting the constellations. It was all I could hope for as a kid. And here I am an adult still looking beyond Ursa Major, singing heaven’s melodies, and winning victories until earth’s twilight gives way to the dawn of eternity.
And in that dawn, be it red-gold, pale blue and purple, or pearl gray, dissolving into colors beyond the spectrum, I will catch my first glimpse of the place I have dreamed of ten thousand times since I gazed into the endless depths of a summer sky as a little girl. It will be new, but it won’t be strange to me. It will be the back roads of Maryland, the early morning shimmer on Chesapeake Bay, the crash of surf on a warm California beach, and the patches of impossible blue between the pine trees in the high Sierras. It will be everything dear and familiar scrubbed clean, rain-washed with joy, and multiplied a million times over.
But more than any celestial landscape, I long for something else even more. His voice, as He stands on the back porch of heaven, calling me home to supper. And when I first catch sight of Him, arms open to welcome me …
Just watch me run.