As I stood looking down into the coffin which contained the body of an elderly Christian women the weight of my own mortality bore down on me. When I was greeting the family members, one woman of my age remarked that she looked at a picture recently and realized everyone in it except her had passed on. “Yes,” I replied, “we’re next in line.” It could be a depressing fact!

Eternity is written into our hearts by our Creator. Solomon said, “God has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT)

That appointment, deny it though we may in so many ways, is inevitable. For the Christian, there is a promise that gives hope. The end of this earthly life is not the end. It is a change of address as we go home. What a home God promises for us. That eternal home has no sin nor suffering. Tears are wiped away forever and our longings for God are fulfilled. David’s words are mine – “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4, NIV)

Dallas Willard one of my favorite Christian teachers, urges Christians to lift their vision, to ‘see’ beyond time’s horizon. A faith-inspired vision of our promised Paradise protects us from despair. He writes –
“I meet many faithful Christians who, in spite of their faith, are deeply disappointed in how their lives have turned out. Sometimes it is a matter of how they experience aging, which they take to mean they no longer have a future. But often, due to circumstances or wrongful decisions and actions by others, what they had hoped to accomplish in life they did not …. Much of the distress of these people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them…  one that goes on endlessly before us in the kingdom of God.”  (The Divine Conspiracy) 

The frustration and futility that stalk us in this present realm lose much of their power when Heaven is in our heart! Right here, even now, we are eternal creatures. Yes, the bodies we live in are aging. This globe we call home is decaying, but we are alive forever in Christ!

Jesus stood outside of the tomb of a dead friend, looked his sister, Martha, in the eye and promised “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live.” (John 11:25, The Message)

Eternal life begins now, not when we die. The hope of Heaven is ours today, not just when our bodies are in the grave! I am a citizen of Heaven, now by the grace of Jesus Christ. I am connected, right here and right now, with the Lord of Glory, through the Holy Spirit’s immediate Presence. I do not sit around pining for my Heavenly home because I know that my mission is to bring Heaven to earth, even as I live with an expectation of glories to come. I know the joy of overwhelming the darkness of sin with the Light of Heaven, right now!

Let’s be like Abraham. He heard God’s call, grasped the reality of eternal life, and lived the rest of days here on earth on pilgrimage. He took some detours from the straight and narrow path, but he never lost sight of where he was going. “It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in a tent. And so did Isaac and Jacob, to whom God gave the same promise. Abraham did this because he was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.” (Hebrews 11:8-10, NLT)

The ‘heaven’ of our modern imagination, which fills the movies, is far from the reality of Scripture. Misty fog enveloping transparent spirits floating in a ghostly realm, spirits living at the edge of human consciousness trying to reach us, are inventions of storytellers.

Heaven is a real substantial place, created by the same Person that thought up the refraction of sunlight by water moisture which produces the beauty of a rainbow.
Heaven is unfathomable beauty.
Heaven is suffused with the love which we see in Christ Jesus, who left His place to seek and save those who are lost. The most beautiful music, the deepest love, the most stirring worship, the most blissful day – are just glimpses of what will be ordinary in eternity!

So, by faith, reach out and hold onto Heaven even as you live your life to the full. 
When life is overwhelming, when sin threatens to engulf you, when everything seems futile, when disappointment breaks your heart – look up and thank God that He has written Heaven into your heart. It is precisely the longing for Paradise that makes us unwilling to settle down and desire our best life now. We are headed home!

The word from the Word is a portion of the ‘faith’ chapter that describes the hope of saints in times of trouble. 

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.

Instead, they were longing for a better country-a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”   (Hebrews 11:13-16, NIV)

The inevitable appointment is robbed of dread when we remember that we are on our way home.
Amen!