PART 2 – (it’s a little long, but hey, we’re talkin’ about heaven!)
His face. Actually, think about that. The face John described as shining like the sun at full strength. The face Christians have spent two thousand years trying to imagine. You will see Him. And somehow, because everything broken has finally been made new, you will be able to stand there and look at Him…
Continued from last newsletter Oct 8th.
Maybe every question you spent years planning to ask suddenly seems less urgent. All those times you said, “When I get to heaven, I am asking God why He allowed this,” and now He is standing in front of you. Maybe some questions are answered. Maybe there are things we finally understand. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly how that works, and I don’t want to pretend it does. But I have a hard time imagining finally seeing Jesus face to face and thinking my first priority is getting through the list of complaints I carefully saved.
And somewhere in all of this, maybe there is one final tear, because God Himself “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” Revelation 21:4. I don’t know if we fully grasp how personal that sentence is. The God whose throne is surrounded by lightning and thunder, the God before whom elders throw down their crowns, the God worshiped by angels beyond counting, the God who spoke galaxies into existence, notices tears on the face of one human being. Your tears. And then there aren’t any more. Ever. There will never again be a phone call telling you somebody died. There will never again be a hospital waiting room or someone walking into the room with that expression that tells you the news before they say it. There will never again be cancer or dementia or suicide or war. There will never again be abuse hidden behind closed doors. There will never again be a child afraid of someone who should have protected them. There will never again be an animal suffering because creation itself is broken. There will never again be a grave dug into the earth while people stand around it crying. There will never again be the sickening realization that someone you love is gone.
Death shall be no more.
Not less death. Not rare death. Not death pushed farther into the future by better medicine. No death. No mourning. No crying. No pain. And maybe that takes a while to understand because you spent your entire earthly life knowing that everything ends. Every beautiful day eventually got dark. Every vacation had a last day. Every childhood ended. Every animal you loved grew older. Every person you hugged had a limited number of days, even when neither of you knew the number. Every good moment carried the possibility that it could be the last one like it. There was always a clock somewhere in the background, quietly counting down, and even when you weren’t consciously thinking about it, you lived your entire life under its shadow.
Except now there is no clock counting down.
There is no last time.
You don’t have to look at something beautiful and desperately wish you could freeze the moment because the moment isn’t being taken away from you. You don’t have to hug someone and wonder whether you will get another chance. You don’t have to memorize the sound of someone’s voice because someday you might not hear it anymore. You don’t have to watch someone you love get older and quietly calculate how many years you might have left together. You don’t have to say, “Drive safe,” because there will never be a crash. You don’t have to say, “Call me when you get there,” because nobody can fail to arrive. There is no last Christmas together. No last birthday. No last conversation that you didn’t realize was the last conversation until afterward.
There is no goodbye.
And maybe after an entire lifetime of watching, listening, planning, worrying, grieving, preparing and knowing how quickly life can change, you finally understand what rest actually means. You can walk without checking behind you. You can stand somewhere alone without wondering who else might be nearby. You can close your eyes without needing to keep one ear open. You can love somebody without the knowledge that death may someday tear them away from you. You can be completely unaware of your own safety because safety is no longer something you have to maintain. Nothing is hunting you. Nothing is coming for you. Nothing is waiting around the corner. You don’t have to be brave because there is nothing left to fear.
You are home.
And the worship still rolls through heaven like thunder. You look again toward the river shining like crystal, toward the tree of life, toward the multitude no human being could count, toward the angels and the elders and the throne. And finally toward Jesus. Maybe somewhere in that moment you remember earth, and how incredibly solid and permanent everything down there once seemed. The bills were real. The grief was real. The fear was real. The pain was real. The hospital rooms were real. The graves were real. You spent your whole life surrounded by things you could touch and see while heaven was the place you had to believe existed without being able to see it at all.
But now you are standing here. You can see the throne. You can hear the thunder. You can feel the roar of worship moving through a multitude too large to count. You can see the river bright as crystal and the tree of life growing beside it. You can see faces from every tribe and language and people and nation. And then you look ahead and see the face you spent your whole life believing you would see someday.
Jesus.
And suddenly you realize that every time you prayed when you couldn’t feel Him, He was there. Every time you worshiped with tears running down your face, He was there. Every time you buried someone you loved and stood beside a grave trying to believe that death wasn’t the end, He was there. Every time you whispered, “God, I don’t understand,” into a dark room and heard nothing back, He was there. Every time you wondered whether heaven was really as real as the world underneath your feet, it was. You just couldn’t see through the veil yet.
And now there is no veil. No distance. No wondering whether He heard you. No wondering whether He was really there. No more trying to imagine His face because you are looking at Him. Maybe then you think about all the things you were afraid of losing. The house. The plans. The years. The people. Your health. Your future. Your life. How desperately you tried to hold everything together because you thought letting go meant losing it forever. And standing there, you finally understand what Jesus meant when He talked about eternal life.
You didn’t lose your life.
You arrived at it.
Earth was not the place you were desperately trying to stay.
It was the road home.
And every grave you ever stood beside was not a doorway into nothing. Every believer you watched close their eyes here opened them somewhere death could never follow. Every goodbye spoken in Christ had an expiration date. Every tear had a number. Every night had a morning coming. Every pain had an ending written into it that you simply couldn’t see from where you were standing. Maybe you look back at the life that once felt so enormous, all those years of worrying and striving and wondering whether God was going to come through, and it suddenly seems like standing on the other side of a storm you thought would never end. You remember the nights that felt endless. You remember the prayers that seemed unanswered. You remember the people you lost. You remember the moments when you honestly didn’t know how you were going to keep going.
And yet here you are.
Not barely surviving.
Not limping across some heavenly finish line.
Whole.
Alive.
Home.
Then you look at Jesus again, and maybe there are a thousand things you thought you would say to Him. A thousand questions you carried for years. A thousand moments you wanted explained. But now those eyes are looking at you, and you realize those are the same eyes that saw every second of your life. He saw the beginning from the end. He saw every road you didn’t understand. He saw every night you thought He had abandoned you. He saw every tear before it fell. And He knew this moment was coming. He knew there would come a moment when you would finally stand somewhere death could not reach you, when faith would become sight, when the God you spent your whole life reaching for would be standing right in front of you.
And perhaps for the first time you understand why Scripture could call all of this hope.
Because the cancer didn’t win.
The accident didn’t win.
The person who hurt you didn’t win.
The years you lost didn’t win.
The grave didn’t win.
Death didn’t win.
Jesus did.
And now there will never again be a morning when you wake up afraid. Never another phone call that changes everything. Never another hospital room. Never another funeral. Never another last breath. Never another goodbye. You will never again watch someone you love disappear from this world. You will never again ask God where He is because you can see Him. And you will see Him tomorrow. And the day after that. And ten thousand years from now, although by then perhaps counting years will seem like something you used to do in another country a very long time ago, you will still be there. He will still be there. The river will still be flowing. The tree of life will still be standing. The worship will still be rising.
And death will still be gone.
Forever.
Maybe that’s the part our minds cannot quite comprehend. There is no ending coming. You have already experienced your last goodbye. You have already cried your last hopeless tear. You have already been afraid for the last time. You have already watched your final sunset wondering what tomorrow might bring. You have already stood beside your last grave. Those things belonged to the old world.
And that world has passed away.
You are home now.
And perhaps the strangest realization of all is that for your entire life, heaven felt far away. Heaven was somewhere up there, somewhere beyond what you could see, while earth felt solid and immediate and real. But standing there, looking at the river of life and the tree humanity lost so long ago, hearing the worship of a multitude nobody could count roll through heaven like thunder, standing in a place where nobody will ever again say goodbye, and finally looking into the face of Jesus, you understand.
Heaven wasn’t the distant place.
Earth was.
For a few short years you lived in the land of graves and goodbyes and clocks and locked doors. You lived where bodies broke, tears fell, people left and everything beautiful seemed to have an ending. And because it was the only world you could see, you called it reality.
But it was never home.
This is.
And all along, through every beautiful moment and every unbearable one, through every prayer and every silence, through every birth and every funeral, through every ordinary day when you completely forgot that eternity existed, you were moving toward this moment.
Toward the throne.
Toward the river.
Toward the tree of life.
Toward the place where death cannot follow.
Toward Jesus.
You spent your whole life saying you hoped heaven was real.
Now you are standing in it.
You spent your whole life believing someday you would see Jesus.
Now He is standing in front of you.
You spent your whole life afraid of death because you thought death was taking you away from everything you knew.
And only now do you understand.
It was bringing you home.
And now you are there.
***
Farmer Girl
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