We talk about heaven so little, you’d think it was a taboo topic. And when it does come up, it’s often reduced to vague, cloudy clichés that feel more like a bad greeting card than the hope of eternity. But what if we dared to imagine it—really imagine it—the way Scripture hints and our hearts long for?
While writing this blog, I witnessed a near miss—a speeding small car almost collided with a big semi that had pulled out into the middle of traffic. Nothing makes me think about my existence after death more than DFW traffic!
Heaven is a topic we seldom talk about. And if we do, it is usually in very vague terms. That’s probably because it’s the one thing no one on earth has ever truly experienced. We don’t have experts. We do have a handful of people who died, felt God’s presence (or absence), and were then brought back to life. But even they didn’t see the full heavenly experience.
As a child, my dad and grandfather would endlessly discuss how and when they believed Jesus would return. Way too early in life, I was exposed to words like premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. To this day, I couldn’t tell you much about any of those terms because my mind tuned it all out. In fact, for many years I read passages in Isaiah and Revelation much like I would read Narnia, thinking, “It’s a nice idea—but get real.”
Then I read a book that changed my whole perspective about our heavenly future. It was called All Things New: Heaven, Earth and the Restoration of the Things You Love by John Eldredge. I loved that it didn’t try to give me a timeline. Instead, it focused on the glory we will experience someday. It gave me a hope I had long ago buried and left my imagination to fill in the beautiful details. Now, I see our final destination as something to anticipate and savor—it is the prize Paul talked about in Philippians.
