Chapter 1 What’s So Great About Heaven?
Chapter 1
What’s So Great About Heaven?
It was a dark and windy night.
Before returning to the warmth of the house, I huddled against the cold air to listen to my neighbor’s whistling pine trees and gaze at the thin slice of moon smiling on the horizon. My eyes scanned the canopy of stars above to locate the constellation Ursa Major—I knew the Big Dipper was part of it, but having only recently memorized it from a book, I had never seen the whole thing.
I searched and searched, and suddenly, there it was, the familiar arrangement of stars spread out grand and glorious across one-fourth of the sky. I had no idea it was so big. Nor had I realized how beautiful.
I shivered, feeling small and swallowed up underneath the starry dome that seemed to reverberate with a song. Yes, I could have sworn I heard a song. Was it the faint tune of a hymn in my heart? Was it the morning stars singing together? I don’t know, but the song struck a chord in me, like a tuning fork resonating in my soul. The stars and music took my breath away, and before the cold drove me indoors, my heart broke with joy, and I whispered toward the sky, “Jesus, I’m coming home; I belong up there.”
I wheeled out of that moment, through the garage door, and into the kitchen. The fluorescent light made me squint as I nudged the door shut. I breathed in the aroma of dinner cooking. The house was warm and softly lit, the television was droning in the living room, and my husband, Ken, was in the hallway talking to a friend on the phone.
For a long minute, I sat in the kitchen, letting the warmth caress my icy cheeks. Outside I had touched a moment of great happiness and wisdom, but I knew I was incapable of holding onto that heavenly moment. Few are skilled at holding themselves in a state of listening to heaven’s music. Ordinary things—like kitchen pots clattering, telephones ringing, and TV commercials about frozen food and dishwashing detergent—drown out the song. It is too delicate to compete against mundane things. The music and the moment fades, and we become our ordinary selves, leaving the child outside, and shelving our fascination with the moon, the stars, and the night wind. We consign heavenly thoughts to some other time.
Yet we live in the powerful memory of those moments.
Whether we are adults or children, our best memories are usually the sort which, like a tuning fork, strike that resonant chord in our souls. It’s a song we never quite forget and recognize immediately whenever we catch its echo. We recognize it because it is so full of heartbreaking beauty. Like deep calling to deep, it is stamped with His imprint; and since we bear His image, the memory is sealed in that deepest, most profound part of us. Such moments cast soundings and plumb the real depths of who we are. And what we hear is a heavenly echo.
We may hear the haunting echo under a night sky or even in a symphony, a poem, or catch it in a painting. In fact, it is singers, writers, and painters who most often try to capture the echo, this heavenly music that compels us to sing, write, or paint something truly beautiful.
I know because I’m an artist. I have to confess, though, I’ve never succeeded in painting a picture of heaven. People have asked me why, and I haven’t come up with a good answer, except to say that heaven defies the blank canvas of the artist. The best I can offer are scenes of breathtaking mountains or clouds that halfway reflect something of heaven’s majesty. I’m never quite able to achieve the effect.
And neither is earth. Actual mountains and clouds are exalting, but even the most beautiful displays of earth’s glory—towering thunderheads above a wheat field or the view of the Grand Canyon from the south rim—are only rough sketches of heaven. Earth’s best is only a dim reflection, a preliminary rendering of the glory that will one day be revealed.
Trouble is, we rarely let that fact sink in. That is, until we are stopped short by one of those brilliant nights when the air is clear like crystal and the black sky studded with a million stars. It takes such a moment to make us pause, watch our breath make little clouds in the night air, and think, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14).
Then we rush indoors to catch the six o’clock news or referee an argument between our kids. The heavenly moment is lost and we think, Life doesn’t seem like a mist that quickly vanishes.
We really don’t believe it’s all going to end, do we? If God hadn’t told us differently, we’d all think this parade of life would go on forever.
But it will end. This life is not forever, nor is it the best life that will ever be. The fact is that believers are headed for heaven. It is reality. And what we do here on earth has a direct bearing on how we will live there. Heaven may be as near as next year, or next week; so it makes good sense to spend some time here on earth thinking candid thoughts about that marvelous future reserved for us.
I love thinking and reading about heaven. But I’ve noticed as I’ve flipped through the pages of Scripture—our best resource about heaven—that its language is cryptic. You almost have to crack heaven’s hieroglyphics before any of it makes sense.
What’s more, I’ve gotten lost in the chronological chaos, wondering how Jesus’ return to earth connects with the millennium, the rapture, the judgment, and the bowls, scrolls, and trumpets in the book of Revelation. How can we pursue heaven through so much confusion or consider our future “marvelous” if we keep stumbling over word pictures of crowns and thrones?
These things only seem to be deterrents. They are actually incentives. The symbols Scripture uses of palms, crowns, streets of gold, and seas of glass are just that—symbols. They never quite satisfy our curiosity about heaven, and they’re not meant to. They are only shadowy images of the real thing, as well as guides and signposts that point us in the right direction to show us the way home.
That’s what the following pages are. Guides and signposts to point you to heaven, the real home of our heart and spirit. I want to tap on your heart, open up a map, and show you the way home. The thoughts contained here are for those whose hearts break for heavenly joy, or at least would like to have their hearts break for heaven. It’s even for those who don’t have the faintest idea about heavenly joy but are haunted with curiosity.
True, heaven may defy the printed page of the author, but words and even paintings, like the one I did to go at the front of this book, can sometimes strike a resonant chord, helping us hear that ancient and heavenly song which the morning stars sang together. Rather than let that song retire in the presence of mundane things like scratchy AM radios and grinding dishwashers, I hope the following pages will help you tune into heaven’s melody.
Like stealing a tiny sip of stew before dinner, it’s meant to be a foretaste of what to expect when you get to the banquet table.
It’s meant to point you to the sky and help you see something far, far beyond the constellation of Ursa Major.
Let’s not get too settled in, too satisfied with the good things down here on earth. They are only the tinkling sounds of the orchestra warming up. The real song is about to break into a heavenly symphony, and its prelude is only a few moments away.
A First Hint of Heaven
The first time I heard that haunting heavenly song, so ancient and so new, was in the summer of 1957. My family and I had packed up, piled into our old Buick, and were heading west through the country roads of Kansas. Daddy pulled the car over onto the gravel shoulder to stop by a roadside ditch so my sister could go to the bathroom. I jumped out of the sweltering backseat and wandered beside a barbed wire fence along the road. It was a chance to dry the sweat off my back, as well as to explore.
I stopped and picked up a piece of gravel, examined it, and then heaved the stone beyond the fence far out into the biggest, widest, longest field I had ever seen. It was an ocean of wheat, waves of golden grain rippling in the wind, all broad and beautiful against a brilliant blue sky. I stood and stared. A warm breeze tossed my hair. A butterfly flittered. Except for the hissing sound of summertime bugs, all was quiet, incredibly quiet.
Or was it?
I can’t remember if the song came from the sky or the field, or if it was just the sound of crickets. I tried hard to listen, but instead of actually hearing notes, I felt…space. A wide-opened space filling my heart, as if the entire wheat field could fit into my seven-year-old soul. I rolled my head back to look up at a hawk circling overhead. The bird, sky, sun, and field were lifting me in some heavenly orchestration, lightening my heart with honesty and clarity like an American folk hymn in a major key, pure, upright, and vertical. I had never felt—or was it, heard?—such a thing. Yet as soon as I tried to grasp the haunting echo, it vanished.
I was only seven, but standing there by the barbed wire fence of a Kansas wheat field, I knew my heart had been broken by God. No, I didn’t actually know Him at the time, but I wasn’t so young that I couldn’t sense the occasional stirrings of His Spirit. I kept staring while humming an old Sunday school favorite: “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through.” For me, the moment was heavenly.
Daddy honked the horn and I ran back. Our family drove away with a slightly changed little girl in the backseat.
I can recount handfuls of similar moments when my heart seemed to be a beat ahead of my body and very much in rhythm with the Spirit. One such moment was a few years after the 1967 diving accident in which I became paralyzed. I was just beginning to get my spiritual act together with Jesus, having been pressed up against a wall that caused me seriously to consider His lordship in my life. Those were times I spent long evenings with my friend, Steve Estes, by the fireplace as he pored over his open Bible.
He was guiding me through the Word of God to help me learn about heaven. Immediately, he had my attention. Everybody wants to go to heaven. We are all curious to know where it is, how it looks, who’s there, and what they wear and do. I’m no exception.
I was fascinated to discover that one day I would no longer be paralyzed but have a new glorified body. Immediately I began imagining all the wonderful things I would do with resurrected hands and legs. Swim a couple of laps. Peel a few oranges. Sprint across fields and splash into waves, scale a few rocks and skip through meadows. Such thoughts enraptured me, and sitting there, in a wheelchair and unable to move, I began to sense a longing, a rising echo of that heavenly song about to stretch wide open my heart’s capacity for joy. I could tell my heart was, once again, ready to break for joy.
Sensing my wonder with it all, Steve pointed me to a passage in Revelation chapter 21. I couldn’t wait to read all about this future God was reserving for us. I picked it up with the first verse:
“‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…’”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. This old planet is in bad need of repair.”
“’…for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…’”
“Wait a minute, you mean everything about this earth will disappear and pass away? But there are lots of things I like. Chili dogs with cheese. The NBA playoffs. Bridal Veil Falls at Yosemite National Park.”
“’…and there was no longer any sea.’”
“What! No sea? But I love the ocean. The waves. The wind. The smell of salt in the air. What about splashing in the breakers? What about digging my toes in the sand? To me, heaven has to have oceans in it.”
“‘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 seas? No sand dunes? No Great Barrier Reef? No fields of wheat or sequoia trees? That does it! I hate cities, even if they are holy. Who wants sixteen-story housing projects in the center of heaven? Some people may like perfect urban planning, but not me, brother.”
My friend closed his Bible. He sensed my disappointment. He knew that as quickly as the wonder of heaven had risen in my heart, it had disappeared. This was nothing like the sensation of gazing out over that Kansas field as a kid. Something was terribly wrong, either with me or with the Bible’s descriptions of heavenly glories above.
Sound familiar?
Be honest. Be like any red-blooded, right-thinking Christian with both feet planted firmly on earth. Haven’t there been times when word pictures of heaven from the Bible fall flat and boring next to the breathtaking sight and thunderous roar of Niagara Falls? Or scanning the serene Colorado plains from the pinnacle of Pikes Peak? Or swaying with the motion of acres of rippling waves of golden grain? Do you sense that sometimes the musical notes of God’s creation almost eclipse Ezekiel’s footnotes describing things in heaven as wheels that intersect other wheels as well as move in four directions? “Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around” (Ezekiel 1:18). Whhaat?
Reading about heaven in Scripture can almost sound like bad copy in a Triple A tour book:
A large set of pearl-studded gates will welcome you to heaven, but be careful of slippery roads that are paved with gold. Don’t bother looking for interesting local cuisine as there is no need to eat while in heaven, neither will you need to look for lodging since comfortable beds, crisp sheets, and downy pillows have no purpose.
Topping the list of scenic points is a sea of glass. However, local conditions preclude sunsets, sunrises, or full moons. Do not miss the spectacular New Jerusalem, a striking city of the future, employing award-winning architectural design. Marvel at its twelve foundations. Stand amazed before its twelve gates, each made of a gigantic, single pearl. For sheer spectacle, the New Jerusalem eclipses even the Emerald City of Oz.
“This is upsetting. I don’t understand,” I said to Steve.
For encouragement, he flipped to Jesus’ words in John 14:1–4, “‘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.’”
My friend tried to excite my imagination, explaining that if Jesus is presently preparing heaven, it must be out-of-sight. It only required seven days for Him to create the earth; and, hey, He’s had almost two thousand years to work on my room in His mansion.
A clever maneuver, but it dive-bombed. I could only think of the times I had become bored with the most beautiful hotel rooms in less than a week. He tried again, explaining that all this stuff about mansions and rooms was probably allegorical, anyway. I gave him a puzzled look, wondering how that idea improved on the previous.
You can understand why, at least in the beginning, I preferred thinking about heaven from the edge of a cliff overlooking a stormy ocean rather than from the edge of Revelation chapter 21.
Why Do Heaven’s Symbols Sound So Negative?
I don’t mean to poke fun, but like you, I’m struck that heaven is often described in terms of “no this” and “no that.” No more sea. No more night. No more time. No more moon or sun. And what about food, marriage, sex, art, and great books? Do Ezekiel and the writer of Revelation assume that all the other benefits in heaven should outweigh the “no this” and “no that”? Sitting in a wheelchair for decades has loaded me with a lifetime of glorious memories, everything from feeling my fingers on the cool ivory keys of a piano to the euphoria of diving through the breakers at high tide. Such memories flood every nerve and fiber of my being and, thus, my imagination. It’s awful to think that the best stuff of which memories are made will have no place in heaven. You could say the same.
“However,” Steve challenged, “‘as it is written: No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him…’ Your imagination can’t begin to picture all that God has in store.”
“Well then,” I fumed, “God can’t expect us to get very excited about heaven. If I’ve got to stomp underfoot all the wonderful things I enjoy about earth just so heaven can come off looking better, then count me out.”
It was lost on me how so much of heaven’s happiness could be described in negative terms. Why did God seem to talk about heaven in terms of what it will not be, rather than what it will be?
That’s not all. I was also struck that the positive descriptions about what heaven is seem clumsy and ungraceful. Rainbow thrones? Streets of gold? Pearly gates? A glittering city 1,400 miles in length and as wide and high as it is long with walls 200 feet thick and made of jasper? It more closely resembled Minnesota’s monolithic Mall of America. I was embarrassed to admit it, but even the descriptions about everlasting peace and eternal felicity seemed boring.
My friend sighed and gave one more stab at it. “Joni, you know the Bible well enough to realize it won’t steer you wrong. So rather than put us off, shouldn’t such descriptions ignite our hearts? Aren’t you just a little relieved that heaven can’t be reduced to terms we can manage?”
I looked at him blankly.
“Doesn’t it console you to think that its marvels defy description?” He paused a long minute then added, “Simply put, there are no words for heaven.” Now it was his turn to look at me blankly.
What he was saying was, as someone put it, darkness to my intellect but sunshine to my heart. He was right. I wanted those streets of gold and pearly gates to ignite my heart, not throw ice water on it. My heart wanted heaven to be the tuning fork God strikes. I wanted the deepest part of me to vibrate with that ancient yet familiar longing, that desire for something that would fill and overflow my soul.
I smiled. Then we both smiled. We knew God had not brought us this far only to disappoint me with mere negatives. I was not about to be daunted. There must be positives. The Bible was a book to be trusted, so there must be more behind the rainbow throne than met the eye. All this stuff about golden cities and seas of glass had to be clues in some amazing mystery. And if Psalm 25:14 was correct, if “the Lord confides in those who fear him,” then it’s a mystery that God intends to stimulate me to seek, to rouse and stir my interest until I grasp what heaven is about.
I felt recharged. I decided to tell Steve about that long ago and faraway summer afternoon by the wheat field in Kansas. “I was only a little girl, but heaven seemed so close to me then, so real,” I sighed. I described the joy and the wonder, the feeling of space and the sound of music. I then told him I wanted heaven to feel like that…I wanted a kind of map back to that wheat field.
“But your longings about heaven have to hang on something,” my friend warned. “You can’t ignore streets of gold and rainbow thrones just because they don’t thrill you at first glance. They’re the images God gave us—the symbols Scripture invites us to ponder. They’re not deterrents to your faith, they’re incentives.”
I knew he was right on this point too. If I skirted the glittering celestial city with walls 200 feet thick and made of jasper—just because I didn’t like the idea of urban planning in heaven—I’d have nothing to hang my faith on but my imagination. And that could be dangerous, if not a little New Age-ish.
“Joni, don’t mistake signs in the Bible for the reality they only represent. It’s like this: Suppose we’re driving down the road and see a green highway sign that reads, ‘Chicago: 50 miles.’ In no way would we mistake that road sign for Chicago, right?”
“Right.”
“We both understand it’s pointing us fifty miles down the road to a reality far, far beyond a five-by-eight-foot green sign with white lettering.”
This was easy to track.
“In the same way, don’t walk up to a wall 1,400 miles high made of sparkling jewels and stop there. Don’t get down on all fours to examine whether the gold streets are 18-karat as opposed to 24-karat. These things are only pointing to a mind-boggling reality far beyond mere symbols.”
Slowly the light dawned. The problem lay not with the Bible’s descriptions of heavenly glories, but with the way I was looking at those symbols.
Steve charged ahead. “Since you seem less than enthusiastic about the New Jerusalem, consider this: Its walls are said to be the same height, width, and length. The city is a perfect cube of 1,400 mile proportions. What do you think that means?”
“That heaven’s ugly,” I replied.
“Aha! Watch it or you’ll smack your face on a Chicago road sign,” he laughed. “If you stop with only the symbol, you’re right, it’s not a pretty sight. But symbols point away from themselves to something else.”
We turned to the Old Testament description of King Solomon constructing the Holy of Holies in the ancient temple in Jerusalem, the room where the ark of the covenant rested. First Kings 6:20 reads, “The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty wide and twenty high.”
“You see,” he said, “the proportions are identical, only heaven is said to be about a quarter of a million times larger. Since the book of Revelation insists that no temple is found in heaven, the idea is probably that Paradise is all temple. Just as God’s dazzling presence filled the Holy of Holies, so it will fill that Holy City. Only more intensely.”
“Hmmm…that’s something to think about,” I mused.
“Exactly! You have to think. When you take time to ponder Scripture, your faith has something to hold onto. Something that’s factual and true. Your faith has something to feed on, something from which your dreams about heaven can take root.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Steve Estes had just shown me how to read the map, how to understand the legend and symbols that would show me the way home to heaven. For when it comes to heaven, there is no limit to what the Lord will confide to those whose faith is rooted in Scripture.
Seeing Heaven Through Eyes of Faith
The Bible provides the symbols. But it is faith that makes the hieroglyphics of heaven come alive. And heaven has to come alive! After all, you’re a citizen of the kingdom of heaven and according to Philippians 3:20, you’re supposed to be eagerly awaiting it. Heaven is your journey’s end, your life’s goal, your purpose for going on. If heaven is the home of your spirit, the rest for your soul, the repository of every spiritual investment on earth, then it must grip your heart. And your heart must grip heaven by faith.
Heaven has been, and always shall be, a matter of faith. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). Stop and pick that verse apart. Faith means believing in realities that go beyond sense and sight. It is being sure of something you hope for, that is, sure about unfulfilled things in the future. And it’s being certain of something you can’t see, that is, being aware of unseen divine realities all around you. To put it another way, faith not only makes you sure that heavenly streets of gold really exist, but it helps you see something beyond the earthly streets of asphalt that exist in the here and now.
Now, it takes no more than a mustard seed-sized grain of faith to be sure of unfulfilled things in the future. It takes no great faith to be aware of unseen divine realities all around us. If you are aware of realities you can’t see, and if you’re certain there are many more realities yet to be fulfilled, you are halfway to solving the mystery!
Let’s try it out on a few word pictures in the book of Ezekiel.
The prophet is sitting by a river bank when suddenly—in a flash—he squints at the heavens opening above him. “I looked, and I saw…an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures…their faces looked like this…” Then Ezekiel goes on to describe four heads with eyes, ears, noses, and mouths of oxen and men, lions and eagles. I think.
My heart goes out to Ezekiel. He was just minding his own business by the river when, without warning, God pressed his eyes smack-flat against the brilliance of heaven, a brilliance that the ordinary faithful see from a distance, and then, only through a glass darkly. The prophet strained to find words to describe what he witnessed, but after hunting through his dictionary for adequate nouns and adjectives to draw a picture of heaven, he had to fall back on language that was old and familiar. Thus, the strange pictures of beasts with weird faces and wheels that science fiction writers would dream up.
Ezekiel courageously plunged ahead and put it into writing. God revealed to him something supernatural—a whole bunch of unseen divine realities—but God didn’t give the prophet a thesaurus of supernatural words. So Ezekiel had to rely on the language of resemblance. The center of the fire looked like this…and the faces looked like that. In fact, the nearer Ezekiel approaches the burning throne, the less sure his words.
You can almost hear Ezekiel stutter and stammer starting with verse 26 of chapter 1:
Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.
Did you count all the “looked likes” and “like that ofs” and “what appeared to bes” and “as ifs”? Poor guy. The throne wasn’t anything like King David’s; the piece of furniture Ezekiel observed was more like “the appearance of a throne.” And the Lord who was sitting on it? He could only be described as “the likeness of the appearance of a man.”1
The same is true for the apostle John scrambling to write down his heavenly vision as he sits on the beach on the island of Patmos. Thus, the apostle’s best effort to describe what looks like rivers of glass, streets of gold, and gates of pearl.
My point? Were Ezekiel and John sure of what they hoped for? Of course. Were they certain of things they had never seen? You bet. They witnessed far into the future something yet to be fulfilled, and when the Lord pulled back the curtain so they could actually see the unseen realities, they trusted Him to bring it to pass. Their faith about heaven may have been hazy in days gone by, but once their eyes were opened, realities with a small r became Realities with a capital R.
Now it’s true they had a slight advantage. When they saw heaven, it was a little like standing in front of an arc light without sunglasses on. They couldn’t miss it. They saw with their eyeballs what they had been hoping for all their lives. But before you envy them, remember that “hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?” (Romans 8:24–25).
Ezekiel and John saw their hope. We cannot. And this is why the heavenly song is still an echo. It’s a yearning, unfulfilled. A longing that is still an ache. But that’s not such a bad thing. We may strain and squint to see heaven through a glass darkly, but when we, the ordinary faithful, catch a glimpse, we may be in a more blessed state than even that of a prophet. How so? Jesus commends the faith of people like you and me in John 20:29 when He elevates us, saying, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus says there is a special kind of blessedness, a unique happiness reserved for people like you and me who dig through earth’s dirt to decipher heaven’s hieroglyphics. When it comes to heaven, if you can move beyond the symbols and be sure of what you hope for, as well as certain that what you do not see is there, then you are edging close to the fellowship of prophets and apostles. For although a rainbow throne was emblazoned on their eyes, you can glimpse what the throne symbolizes, and you can see what’s beyond, albeit through a glass darkly.
Why Heaven Is Hard to Understand
There is something else we can learn from Ezekiel and John. As weird and strange as the word pictures are, they convey one thing for certain: The whole scene in heaven is very real. There’s nothing wispy or vaporous about the exact measurements of a twelve-layered foundation of precious stones.
It’s real, but entirely alien to anything people have heard of on earth.
God has good reasons for describing it this way. You see, if Ezekiel or John or even we were able to break down the infinitely high wall that separates “everything that is spiritual” from “everything that is not spiritual,” if we were able to scale that wall with the ropes and grappling irons of human understanding, then, good grief, our faith wouldn’t mean very much.
God designed both heaven and humans so that a cloud of mystery would prevent you and me from fully grasping heaven with language and logic. The apostle Paul, like Ezekiel and John, saw heaven with his own eyes; but unlike them, he was not only unable to describe the sights, he wasn’t permitted! The mystery is supposed to remain intact. We cannot fashion heaven solely out of the Lincoln Logs of our logic. Even if we could, we would merely be illuminating the sun with a flashlight. We are only allowed to break through the glass darkly by faith.
I’m thankful heaven is grander than human language. And as for those “clunky” sights in that Triple A tour book, faith removes the clunkiness. Trying to grasp heaven without faith is like trying to admire the outside of a huge great cathedral with grand windows. Standing outside, you see an impressive but imposing structure. The building is striking, but has no real glory. But if you go inside the cathedral—which is a little like looking at heaven through eyes of faith—you are breathless as you stand washed in glorious colors from the light that streams through the window.2
Faith takes us beyond the imposing and impressive language of golden cities and thrones, and reveals the better, brighter glory inside the walls of the New Jerusalem. Faith takes the descriptions of 24-karat asphalt and big pearls swinging on hinges and makes us certain that what we hope for is far, far better than here.
How much better?
Look Beyond the Negatives
Remember how I soured on all the “no this” and “no that” descriptions in heaven? No food, no marriage, no moon, no need for good books? Faith reminds us that every negative is only the reverse side of a fulfilling. A fulfilling of all that God intended our humanity to be. True, we may enjoy a good charcoal-broiled steak or a night of romance with our husband or wife under a full moon, but faith tells us these things are inklings of better tastes and enraptured delights yet to come. They won’t be negated, no; rather, the whisper of what they are on earth will find complete fulfillment in heaven.
Don’t assume that if there is no marriage in heaven, we shall be forced to embark on an eternal abstinence. Don’t chew on the idea that with no charcoal grills in heaven, we shall be compelled to take nourishment in gray tasteless pills.
Use your eyes of faith. Think of it in terms of “future divine fulfillments.” See that every negative is just a reverse side of a fulfilling. Because what is no longer needed for biological purposes, such as procreation or digestion, may serve a far higher, more beautiful function.
This is one of those realities that goes beyond sense or sight. Consider where it says, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life…” (James 1:12 KJV). From a verse like this we can infer that when we curb our appetites on earth and refuse to let lust and gluttony ruin wonderful things like marriage or food, our victories gain glory and splendor in heaven. If we controlled our hormones on earth, then fidelity in marriage will serve us in eternity as a triumphant weapon with which we defeated temptation. All this will bring greater glory to God.
I broached this subject of “controlling hormones” on another one of those pleasant evenings around the fireplace with Steve. It was the big question everybody wonders about heaven sooner or later. I was only a teenager and embarrassed to use the word sex, so I casually remarked, “What’s this stuff about ‘no marriage in heaven’ supposed to mean?”
He seemed to read my mind, and smiling, he said, “Joni, things like procreation and digestion are physical functions necessary for our life here on earth. When it comes to heaven, I don’t think we’ll become genderless or never sink our glorified teeth into a juicy peach. It’s just that heaven promises something far, far better. Far better than even the pleasure people enjoy in marriage.”
I looked at him with skepticism. “I’m not married, but that’s pretty hard to imagine.”
“No, it’s not hard to imagine, it’s impossible. Absolutely impossible. We have no idea what God is preparing. But look at this verse in Psalm 16:11,” he said as he flipped back to the Old Testament. “‘You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.’ Faith tells us that the pleasures and the privileges people enjoy in marriage are only hints and whispers of greater delights yet to come.”
I gave him a doubtful grin. I decided, though, he was right. My questions about intimacy and food would have to be shoved to the back burner for the time being. I would have to cultivate faith that every negative is only the reverse side of a fulfilling. A fulfilling of all that God intended our humanity to be.
Not only will there be no need for procreation and digestion, there will not—I repeat will not—be a sun or a moon in heaven. Revelation 21:23 says, “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it.” But don’t grieve. Heaven won’t be less than the wonder you experience over a glorious sunrise or a glowing moonlit night, “for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” Even light will have its future divine fulfillment, for it will be a better light, “not as a candle flame that is put out, but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen Son.”3
Faith tells us not to grieve. We will not lose in heaven. We will gain. The Lord who has planted the seed of future divine fulfillments in almost every good thing on earth will carry it on to completion until the day He arrives and makes crystal clear all the unseen divine realities. God won’t throw any good thing away. “The old field of space, time, matter, and the senses is to be weeded, dug, and sown for a new crop.”4
See Into the Positives
May I pose a question that will explain something else about all those negatives in heaven? Do you know why a photographer uses a negative to take your photo? He uses it to show us a positive image. It’s the same principle when I paint at my easel. Sometimes I choose not to outline a shape, such as a leaf, with a brush, but rather I paint the sky all around the leaf, which then defines its shape. It’s called “negative space” painting, and it’s a way—some would say a better way—of giving definition to the shapes of leaves against a sky. The artist helps you see by painting what you don’t see.
The principle is the same when it comes to heaven: The negatives are used in order to show us the positive. On earth, we know all too well what the negatives are: suffering, pain, and death. Show us their opposites, the positive side, and we shall have the best possible idea of the perfect state. For instance, there may be no moon, no marriage, and no need to eat in heaven, as suggested in Revelation 21, but there are also some pretty good negatives we can relate to and curiously, they’re all listed in Revelation 21 too.
No more sorrow.
No more crying.
No more pain.
No more curse.
And, praise God, no more death.
We’d all admit that the sum of human misery on earth vastly outweighs the sum of human happiness. Job said, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble” (14:1). David the psalmist expresses this in Psalm 55:6, 8: “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest…I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.”
I’m with Job and David: Get me outta here!
Have you ever felt that way? I can’t tell you how much sorrow I’ve held at bay over the years. Tears could come easily if I allowed myself to think of all the pleasures of movement and sensation I’ve missed. Diving into a pool and feeling my arms and legs slice through the water. Plucking guitar strings with my fingers. Jogging till my muscles burn. Cracking steam-broiled Maryland crabs with a mallet. Throwing back the covers in the morning and hopping out of bed. Running my hands across my husband’s chest and feeling it. To think that one day we shall hear these words uttered that haven’t been spoken since Adam was thrust out of Eden: “There shall be no more sorrow.”
Faith to Find Your Way Home
Do you see it? Are your eyes of faith focusing better? Or rather, can you hear it? The faint echoes of some distant heavenly song? It’s whispering that heaven will not be an unmaking of all the good things we know, but a new and vastly improved version. Heaven will also be an undoing of all the bad things we know as God wipes away every tear and closes the curtain on pain and disappointment.
In fact, I’m going to correct something I wrote earlier. Remember the comment made during one of those fireplace discussions, “There are no words for heaven”? It should be, “Heaven is too specific, too real for language.”5 If we’ve learned anything from the prophet Ezekiel and the apostle John, it’s that heaven is real. It’s not a state or a condition, but a place. A place with streets, gates, walls, and rivers. We are wrong in thinking heaven is wispy, thin, and vaporous. It is earth that is like withering grass, not heaven.
What it takes to know the place Jesus has gone ahead to prepare, is faith. Faith in what God has to say about heaven from His Word. For when God chose to talk about heaven, He did so using the nouns and verbs, syntax and grammar of the Bible. And although He mainly expounded on heaven in highly symbolic books like Ezekiel and Revelation, these symbols are meant to be motivation for our minds and fodder for our faith…
Faith that focuses not on the scriptural symbols, but inside and beyond them.
Faith that develops the skill of holding onto that heavenly moment.
Faith that shows you the way home.
This kind of faith will bring heaven forward into vivid reality. It will bring into vital contact with your heart the things that people call invisible and distant. It will involve your heart and your eyes. If the apostle Paul were here, he would repeat Ephesians 1:18: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
Step back for a moment, focus your eyes of faith, and then walk with me into a world you’ve heard about from your youth but have never seen: heaven. What will we be like there? What will we do? Where is this place called heaven and why is it called “home”? Look with me through a glass darkly, and you just might discover that Home is closer—and more real—than you ever thought.