Graduating…
I read a lot. My latest book was ‘Heaven is for Real’ by Todd Burpo. Not a bad read if you want to get a bit of info about one perspective of heaven. I won’t spoil it for you but one of the stories from the book was about meeting a sister that had died in a miscarriage. She was never alive here on earth outside the womb but there she was in heaven. She knew her brother and she did not have a name. Funny the details they shared but it got me to thinking.
We live on this earth for a time and then if we have accepted Christ as our Savior we arrive in heaven when we die. I know you don’t all believe that but bear with me. I am not wanting an argument about how we get to heaven but rather want to consider what happens once we do.
Another book I read a while back was Heaven by Randy Alcorn. He wrote about what we can learn about heaven from scripture. It’s interesting to say the least. It is not about harps and clouds. It’s about a new heaven and a new earth and all the people that live on it in the future. He wrote about what we take with us to the new earth. Our experiences, culture, language and all the rest.
So, what is the point? I got to thinking that if we take our relationships, experiences, culture, language, food and all we have learned here on earth to heaven and the new earth with us, what do the children who did not make it on earth take with them? What happens to those that were miscarried or aborted.I see the next existence as the thing that makes this all make sense. We struggle, work, laugh, cry and in general live our lives that in a lot of ways don’t make any sense unless you are focused on the next life instead of this one.
I see a level of relationships in heaven (or on the new earth) that will come from the stories and experiences we have now. There are people I want to seek out to talk to. J. Vernon McGee is one. Ronald Reagan is another. Abraham Lincoln, Joshua Chamberlain, family that have already gone on, Mark Elliott, Hugh Pope, ML Arnold and a long list of those that have taught me much here. I am glad for eternity because I think it might take that long just to see all of the people I want to see.
Those children won’t have that to build on. I guess as I consider the idea of eternity maybe it doesn’t matter much to those kids but it seems to me that it is a real reason for what we experience here on this earth.
Kevin Myers of 12Stone church talked once about this life on earth being like college. Preparing us for the next life we get to live. When you’re in college you think that it is the way the real world works and when you graduate and go into the work force you find out that it was not. I wonder what we will think of our lives here once we graduate.
I’m not in a hurry to ‘graduate’ but I am looking forward to it too.
Thanks for listening,
Jerry Robertson