heaven is for real

Mom Groves gave us a book for Easter called ‘Heaven is for Real.’ The book is coming up in conversations all over the place, and after Rory finished I picked it up for my turn. I read it in two days and my reaction to the ending surprised me.

The book is about an almost 4-year-old who gets terribly ill and visits Heaven for three minutes. The story unfolds over the next few years as this little boy mentions things about Jesus and Heaven and his ancestors that he really could not have known unless he really was there. When I was half way through the book I told Rory that I was still skeptical, justifying everything he said and how he might have known such information without actually visiting heaven.

I’m not sure when in my adult-life I acquired my adult-like faith. But somewhere along the way I found this voice that wants to reason everything through, rationalize the possibilities and find intelligible ways to justify phenomenal things happening.

I read this book to the end, and I am changed. And I am shocked because my cheese-ball detector was so stinkin high while I read it. I was cynical, skeptical and guarded, but in the end I just felt sorry for myself. When did I lose my child-like faith? I believe in Jesus! Why is it hard for me to believe he is waiting to meet me face to face? I believe in Heaven! Why is it so hard for me to believe that I will go there with every other person who professes Jesus as their God, and that when I do, I will be reunited with my grandpa’s and grandma’s, Hildur, Karen Dwyer, Ed Solomonson, Andy Kingsbury, Marj Engebretson, great aunt Chrystal, great uncle Lawrence and Papa.

Something happened in my adult-like thinking that changed the way I saw heaven and Jesus. Heaven had somehow become this spirit-world filled with balls of light that were actually our souls and there we would just hover together, lights together, formless but bright. And Jesus would be the brightest light and God would be everywhere. And because Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit are triune, they’d just be one intermingled blobby thing radiating over all of us other spirit blobs.

How bizarre.

Through the retelling of this little boy’s experience, and the actual scriptural references to support the details he mentions to his family, I finally got back the faces and flesh to return to those blobby souls. I rediscovered a place I once believed in where Jesus himself will welcome me and then introduce me to my Heavenly Father. I will be reunited with my great cloud of witnesses, and I’ll recognize them and they’ll recognize me.

The thing this changes the very most, then, is that the great commission becomes so much more urgent. If we’re not just light blobs bouncing around (who knows where I had picked up this weirdo thinking!) but we are there, recognizable to one another, then there is a whole new sadness and grief in thinking of family or friends who do not know Jesus as the one who saved them from this selfish life of me, here, now. It makes me want to be so much bolder in how I share Jesus, eternity, salvation.

I remember a few months ago, Rory and I sat in church and watched over 30 immersion baptisms. It moved me to my core and later we shared a conversation about how good it is to remember that what we were witnessing that morning was real life. Everything else we fill our days with are mere distractions from the true call we have been given to seek the lost and share the good news that this world we have constructed all around us isn’t all there is. Thank God. Real life is still to come.

If you have an evening or two, grab yourself a copy of Heaven is for Real. Your cheesy detector may be high, but I believe through this little four-year-old, your thinking may very well be changed.

I worshiped this morning picturing the face of Jesus during every song, and all of the faces of the saints who have gone before me. I envisioned wings on my grandpa’s and I saw them cheering me on, yelling for me to get back in the game…to be courageous in my living. And then I envisioned my Heavenly Father, huge and great and powerful, and real.

I started saying “I believe you are real. I believe you are real. I believe you are real.” It was like I could breathe deeper. I feel something new starting to grow in me again. It’s been a long time since I felt that and it feels so good.