I have been thinking about this post for some time and so hopefully I manage to get out what my thoughts have been. Let me start this blog off by saying this…
“Kraeg, if you are reading this, please place your mouse cursor on the x at the top right hand corner of the screen and close the window because this blog is not for you. This one is going to be a very Christian type blog with lots of things that won’t make sense” … now of course I am kidding a bit, but really, this probably isn’t a blog for any of my non christian readers since I will probably will say things that I have no backing for it other than my faith.
I am sitting here listening to Father’s House by Brian Doerksen… what a great CD to listen to when wanting to talk about God/Jesus and his home. It kinda gets you in the mood to talk about spiritual stuff.
Heaven… this is only relevant to Christians (if I understand the concept properly) because it is home to God and his son Jesus and where we will reside once our time is done on this earth. But do you really think about it? I do a lot because I just can’t get my head around the whole concept of the afterlife. All I imagine is my earthly body and it’s hard to comprehend a spiritual body. I remember as a teenager that “death” and “heaven” was so far away. You think you are going to live forever and so you just don’t worry about things like that. I remember thinking that I would understand it more when I got older. I thought as I aged, things would come easier when it comes to the concept of heaven.
I am now 40 and honestly, I don’t understand it any more now than when I did when I was younger. And it isn’t that I don’t believe in it or even worry about it, but to actually wrap your head around not being in this earthly body is what gets me. How do I imagine living the rest of my life as a “spirit”? We are going to live forever… yikes… how does that look? How do we grasp living forever? It is always talked about in church, but do we really think about it? Do we put our minds into this concept and imagine what “forever” will look like? I try, but it actually stresses me out a bit because I can’t imagine it. I can’t see how it looks because it won’t look like our earthly body. So I tend to just pass it by because it kinda scares me. Even if you can get the concept of Heaven figured out, how does one figure out the “new earth” once this current earth is destroyed. Will it all look different again (Heaven that is), or what?
I look at my life as I am an individual and everything I think and see comes from my perspective and not through anyone else’s eye’s but mine. God created me to see what I see and to figure things out with him. So my thoughts about Heaven are the things that go through my mind and they tend to not be able to be swished away easily. I try not to think about it much at night because death isn’t really something that should be thought about before going to bed (i get nightmares easily).
Do I look forward to spending the rest of my life with Jesus face to face? “hell ya”… for sure and yuppers! I can’t wait to see my hero face to face. But when I picture that, I see it in the earthly form that I am, but it won’t be that way, because we will loose our earthly form when we die. How do I see it differently? Maybe I don’t have a good enough imagination to see it, but I do know it will look fairly different that what I imagine it to be. I know life in heaven will be without sin, without having to choose between right and wrong and spending eternity happy. Does it matter that it will look different than what I imagine? I guess not because ultimately it’s our goal and how it looks shouldn’t matter.
So when I am a little frightened about death and living life forever in Heaven, I will just remember that when it is my time to go, that God will take me in his arms and will bring me peace because he is taking me home. How that home will look will make no difference to me at that point because my earthly body will be gone and all that will be left is my spirit. I sure hope God/Jesus can handle my spirit up there in Heaven though… I still might cause trouble (in a non sinful way of course). I guess how we look at Heaven in our earthly way is ok and we can imagine it however we want because when we actually get there, we will just be happy to be there and not worried about anything else.
I still can not grasp eternity, but maybe as I get older I will understand all this a little better, but from my experience so far, that hasn’t been the case. I guess it doesn’t matter if I don’t understand it and I will try not to over think it because it doesn’t really matter in the end because we will just be happy to be living with God/Jesus at his home.
So for now, I will imagine Heaven to be side by side with Jesus chatting with him about stuff and Elton John playing the piano in the back ground (yes I have faith that he might still find his way there). In case we do have any form of an earthly body, I have requested that mine look like Shania Twain’s.