A Reflection About Heaven

 When I was a kid, my sisters and I choreographed a dance to the song “I can only imagine”, the hit Christian single on the mercyMe CD my dad had purchased. This was 2001 or 2002, and at 9 years old, I had absolutely no real concept of what I was singing - I never imagined heaven would be anything different from my idyllic childhood. Singing about being surrounded by Jesus’ glory was just something I did, not something I spent much time imagining. 

Now that I'm grown, I imagine heaven much more often, especially in the month of May, which is the anniversary of my dad's passing, and especially this year, when I've been hit personally by two different unexpected losses (my uncle to a heart attack and my cousin to a car accident). And also, the older I've gotten, the more I've had to come to terms with my own sin and brokenness, and with the sin and brokenness of the world.

There's a new song by Phil Wickham that better captures my thinking about heaven now. It too asks, “can you even imagine”, but the repeated refrain and title of this song is “Homesick for heaven”. 

Here are some of my favorite lyrics from the end of the song:

“No more fear, no more pain

Every tear wiped away

Crying Holy, Holy

Every knee on the floor

Every voice evermore

Crying Holy, Holy, yeah

Oh, I wanna go home

To see the ones I love, who've gone before

Where death is a memory and tears are no more

To hear the angels praise, can you even imagine”

The idea of no more fear, no more pain, in a world that, because of brokenness, feels full of more fear and pain than ever before, more than any one person can bear? And the longer I live, the more loved ones I know who have gone before. It would be so easy to long for heaven and not think about today, and indeed when I first started this post that is what was in my mind, except that I got the weekly world news in prayer email yesterday, which had the following intro:

—---

When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” – Acts 1:9-11

Holy and Living God,

Like the disciples in Acts, we confess that we are often tempted to stand still, looking toward heaven.

When the world feels too heavy,

when the news comes too quickly,

when war and rumors of war pile on top of political conflict, climate crisis, and human suffering, it is tempting to look away.

It is tempting to lift our eyes upward and hope that somehow faith will give us permission to escape the pain of the world.

But just as the angels spoke to the disciples, we hear the holy question again:

“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

So, God, turn our eyes back toward the earth you love.

—-------------

And so here I am. Left with my grief, sitting in between my dad's birthday and my Uncle Keith's birthday, missing them both. Shattered by the tragedy of my cousin’s life being cut short, by the fact that his one year old son won't remember how much his dad loved him, how much his dad rejoiced in him. Wondering how to turn my eyes back to earth.

But there's another line in the homesick for heaven song that sticks with me:

“I wanna see my children run into Your arms

And worship the Savior who wears my scars

There's an ache in my heart

I'm homesick for Heaven”

And I look at my own two children, and I think how I want them to be in heaven with me. I hear my young neighbor ask me “what does ‘he is risen’ mean?” as she looks at our family Easter photo on my phone lock screen. And while there's an ache in my heart, I pray that someway, somehow, God uses this ache to make me more of a mirror of his grace, his goodness, his steadfast love, that instead of this breaking me, it makes me a better arrow pointing to him as the only hope. I don't know how he can do that, because I'm just so broken down by it all today. But I pray that he will.