Heaven

It’s really amazing how little the modern Canadian Christian culture seems to think about Heaven. The past couple of Sundays our pastor has been speaking on the topic. We were leading worship on the 25th of January, and you wouldn’t believe what a hard time I had finding current music about Heaven.

It’s amazing too what weird things we tend to believe about Heaven. Our thinking sometimes seems to go like this:

In the beginning, God created everything. He created amazing variety, a world full of wonder and mystery that would still fascinate after thousands of years. He created people, relationships, love.

Then it came time to make Heaven. Unfortunately, He had run out of fun ideas after making earth, so Heaven ended up being pretty boring. He made it as bland as possible, and tried to make sure everyone would be doing the same monotonous things over and over and over. He decided He’d have people worship Him using only music, and only very lukewarm, slow, sleepy music. Harps would be preferred, especially for people who didn’t like harps. Maybe He could give everyone all knowledge about everything instantly, so there would be no surprises or challenges for eternity. Maybe He could make sure no one could have any real relationships in Heaven. Wait – here’s another idea – He could force everyone to go to Heaven, especially the people who didn’t want to go, and who didn’t like Him. Then everyone would be stuck in this peacefully, blissful, yet amazingly boring place forever and ever. Thankfully, His last idea was to do away with time, so we’d never know how long we’d been stuck there.

If you think that’s what Heaven will be like, open up your Bible and check again. Heaven is LIFE – all the wonder and joy and excitement that you may have experienced in life will be there unpolluted by all the garbage that messes it up and brings it to an end. It’s going to be like the best of everything, and yet unlike anything. Look forward to it!