What if this is not all there is? What if this is just a waiting room for our real lives? Many often think of death as the end but what if it is just the beginning? Maybe this world is just like being in the womb or in a bad dream. Will this world still be real to us, once we die to this world? If we want to experience Heaven on earth, we must give up this world already.
Many think of death as an ending even if it is never ending; even many Christians do. Heaven is more than a place to rest. It is meant to be a life without suffering and without ending. It is a return to the Garden of Eden, but is exists beyond anything we can imagine.
If you think of time as placing limits on what you can do, imagine there being no limits even on what you can imagine and then being able to create without having to know how to do it. But we will all be working together in pursuit of God’s objectives. There will be entire universes for each of us where we can travel farther than our imaginations can go and still be right with our fellow believers and our God.
Completely breaking down the hostile wall between people and God breaks down more than just suffering. It breaks down all possibility of evil. Eternal life is the greatest creative effort for God and offers the most limitless expression for us to make out of it.
If you compare everything you know to a seed in the garden described in a sentence and then you wake up to see it for the first time fully blooming with thousands of its friends with no imperfections at all, this is something like Heaven. The beauty is not so much in the possibilities but in the impossibility of doing evil.
It always requires much more to create than to destroy things. This is likely why it takes so long to build a civilization from scratch but it can often be removed from memory in a very short amount of time and with much less effort.
Our understanding of Heaven and the afterlife on earth is like a child who doesn’t yet know how to speak trying to understand what it is like on the other side of the galaxy in a thousand years. We cannot even understand how far away the moon is from us and yet we think we can describe Heaven with words.
The Kingdom of Heaven describes both everlasting life in paradise and the Church. What does this say about what is important in Heaven? We think of the jewels on the streets of Heaven or its physical size and are in awe, but true joy and connection with our Creator is infinitely greater.
The same God who created the universe is creating a future for all of us to live with Him without suffering or boredom. This is after knowing full well that we are in the process of destroying His creation and His plan for us out of our pride and foolishness. We are like prisoners coming out of a lockdown into greater safety and freedom than we give to those who sacrificed everything for us get.
The gift of Heaven is that we no more need to worry about anything. The limitations we experience on earth are not relevant anymore. There are no rules because God rules directly over us.
There is no need for any army because there is no evil anymore. God finally makes it impossible for us to hurt each other as we no longer seek more of anything. What is there to steal when the whole thing is made of gold, everything you want is there for you, and there is no market or scarcity of anything good?
Many seem to fear running out of things to do as if we are merely there to do crafts or play card games. Think of how amazing it is how God created people out of absolutely nothing. Not dark matter, not black holes, not empty space, no other realities or universes, singularities or superstrings, absolutely nothing and not even an empty vacuum. When you compare a person to a rock that doesn’t give you anywhere near enough to understand what making a soul out of nothing even means.
So if we are to exist in Heaven in bodies that never deteriorate and we still have all our memories and personal spiritual identities preserved, this sounds like the best of being in a dream, being a child, and being retired with perfect health, immense wealth and technology. But again even things like having perfect health would pale in comparison to not having to suffer and being royalty alongside our Creator.
How can you possibly discount or be frightened of eternity with God? Just because we cannot fully describe it doesn’t mean there is anything disappointing about it. Certainly if all we get is a seat next to Christ and nothing to do but look at Him, certainly this is better than anything we could possibly come up with. When and if you are truly happy and content and never suffer, does it matter if you have everything or not?
So just like a birthday party or a meeting with your best friend any preparations necessary are not burdens or responsibilities but fun activities to do in anticipation. We need to stop thinking of doing things for God because we think we owe Him something. We certainly do, but God has given us this gift freely and so we need to focus on gathering the rest of the guests.
We could ponder forever as to why God wanted to save us, but for whatever reason He did. Yes we are unworthy and yet He stands at our door with a gift for us even though we destroyed His house beforehand partying without Him. Let’s focus on the next step of preparing for His homecoming by creating the kind of party He would want.
He wants everyone at the party and time with Him is better than any gift we could make. To get ready for the party we need to create a space for Him in our hearts, our churches, and our society. We have to pray that He will return. And we have to make peace with Him and everyone else. He is not coming back to destroy our enemies as they are invited as well.
We need to give up and get over the idea of being right and being rewarded for being faithful. God sees no rank amongst people because all people need a miracle to come to faith in Christ. We all have been promised great futures that none of us have sufficiently earned and never will. Our inheritance is not about possessions or even possibilities but about being children of our Creator.
Christ defeated sin permanently but we will not experience this fully until after we physically die. We do evil because we do choose to but our motivation is different once we choose to follow God and so we will not need to fight evil in God’s Heaven. We will no longer be tested and our side has been chosen. This is why there will be no suffering in Heaven.