Voices: Anticipating heaven

When we were children, we thought as children about heaven.

I remember cringing at the thought of death and thinking it was the cruelest thing ever to be invented. To be without my parents and grandparents would be like ceasing to exist. Who would want to go on with life?

I never was able to tell my parents the fullness of my fear, but they had an idea.

Mom said: “Death won’t come for such a long time. There’s no point in thinking about it now.” And: “When death comes, you will be ready for it.”

I was astute enough to know no one knows for sure when death will come, and surely, some folks were not ready but were cruelly caught off guard. She was trying to calm me down.

Fast forward to the day my mother died in 2000. Without thinking, I said to the chaplain at her bedside as she lay lifeless, “We were ready!”

Mom lived in my heart much more than she ever knew.

Mama went to Baylor, and she had so many wise words from her professors that I was pretty sure Baylor and Waco were “over in the Glory Land” somehow. We lived by the quotations of her Bible teachers.

Growing fonder of heaven

As I have become a senior adult, heaven draws me toward itself. What an enormous place to hold all who have ever come to Christ and will come in the future. Every day, one or two of my friends enter heaven’s gates. Seems each day, we launch a friend to the “land fairer than day” and look upward to see if we may be called next.

My family does not like for me to talk about death and transition. But if they love me, they will hear what is on my mind and try to understand.

When a person has glimpsed heaven, this world is just too dull by comparison to love.

My grandmother used to say: “I’ve been everywhere and done everything I wanted to do.”

She thought life was linear, a line of experiences we endured and mastered to fulfill God’s plan for our lives.

As the body weakens and gives out, so does the desire to do the same things over and over again.

At the end of life, we become more spiritual than physical, so we can loosen the ties that bind us to earth and let go.

Letting go

Letting go must be perfect freedom. Our bodies profoundly limit us.

It is amazing to think the cessation of one heartbeat or blood pulsation or breath could end all we are in the physical world.

We know God has made us for more. He set eternity in our hearts—and also in our bodies, I would say. Even our dreams and desires are fulfilled by heaven. We want oneness and wholeness with God, our family, our church, the world.

When my uncle died, we sang “Beulah Land” under the tall pine trees of Mississippi. We stood on the red clay covered in pine needles on a hot, autumn day.

I felt a little weak and faint with emotion, then remembered the city foursquare, the gems and jewels, the Lamb and light, the fountain of living water, the streets of gold, the thrones and angels, the churning energy of pervasive praise.

Can we see heaven from Mississippi? Can we see heaven through tears? Can our family celebrate even in mortal form, headed ourselves to heaven and burial, perhaps in the same cemetery as our loved ones?

The God who made us made heaven. He made all the parts of life and eternity to fit together. His Spirit is a pledge that fills us with hope in the promise of heaven.

Without the Spirit, I could never let go of those I love. But in the Spirit, I can let them go and find the forever love so much greater than mine.

Ruth Cook is an educator assistant for an English-as-a-Second-Language class and is a longtime Texas Baptist. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.