Hello!

I was out of town this weekend, attending my 15 year high school reunion. 

Cra-zay.

I’m getting old.

It was pretty darn fun catching up with people with whom I spent 18 years. 

Parenting sure levels the playing field.

Know what I mean?

None of us know what we’re doing.

Those who used to think they knew, don’t.

Several have special needs children.

We’re all just wanting to do what is best and right.

I enjoyed myself.

Back to reality. 

Thought I’d finish the quote from Alcorn I started last time.  I love using my sanctified imagination to picture what’s in store.  Okay, that last sentence is forcing me to quote a different section first.  Then on to the previous section…

“In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of mainland California.  She’d already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways.  The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accompanying her.  Still, she swam for fifteen hours.  When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it.  Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out.  It wasn’t until she was on the boat the she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away.  At a news conference the next day she said, ‘All I could see was the fog…I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.’

For believers, that shore is Jesus and being with him in the place that he promised to prepare for us, where we will live with him forever.  The shore we should look for is that of the New Earth.  If we can see through the fog and picture our eternal home in our mind’s eye, it will comfort and energize us.”

(Alcorn, Heaven Introduction)

“There will be no temple, no church buildings.  Christ will be the focus of all.  Worship will be unaffected, without pretense or distraction.  We’ll be lost in our worship, overcome by God’s magnificence and the privilege of being his children.

In Revelation 5 we’re told of a choir of angels numbering ten thousand times ten thousand – that’s 100 million!  And then we’re told that the whole rest of creation adds its voices to these 100 million.  The 100 million are merely and ensemble on the stage.  Can you imagine the power of the song?

Will we learn in heaven?  Definitely.  We’re told that in the coming ages God will continuously reveal to us the ‘incomparable riches of his grace’ (Eph 2:7).  When we die, we’ll know a lot more than we do now, but we’ll keep learning about God and his creation and each other throughout eternity.

Will we remember our lives and relationships on earth?  Of course.  (We’ll be smarter in heaven, not dumber!)  Remembrance is important to God, which is why the heavenly city has memorials of people and events of earth (Revelation 21:12-14).  It’s also why God keeps in heaven a ‘scroll of remembrance’ written in God’s presence, ‘concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name’ (Malachi 3:16).  The pain of the past will be gone.  But memories of being together in the trenches, walking with Christ, and experiencing intimate times with family and friends will remain.”

(Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity, pg. 114)

It just keeps getting better.