Choosing Heaven

Because I did a sermon series on revelation recently, and because I had a lot of funerals recently, and because Easter is coming up, I’ve been thinking lately about what heaven might be like.  None of us knows, of course.  Revelation does tell us some things, but we don’t really know whether we’re supposed to take that literally. 

The thing is, if we’re going to think about heaven at all, we have to think about it in terms we can understand.  But it may not be possible to describe heaven in terms that we, as humans, can understand.  Our perspective is limited to what we’ve experienced.  We’ve never experienced heaven, so we can’t have any sort of perspective on heaven. 

We still think about it, though.  You probably do, too.  No matter how we picture the details, we tend to think of heaven as a place where we’ll be happy.  I mean, it wouldn’t be heaven if we weren’t happy, right?  And of course, when we think of being happy, we think of things that make us happy.  And because, again, the only perspective we can have is our human perspective, we tend to think of doing in heaven the things that make us happy on earth.  For me, that might be singing or watching ballgames or riding my bicycle.  For others it might be gardening or working on machinery or quilting or having coffee with friends or any number of other things.

That’s probably not how it works, of course.  And it’s probably lucky for us that it doesn’t.  I mean, I love sports, but I don’t know that I’d want to watch ballgames for all eternity.  That’s probably true of the things you enjoy, too.  You like doing them, for a while, but you probably wouldn’t want to do them for all of eternity.

And so it struck me:  what if that’s the final test?  What if, when we die, we’re offered a choice? One choice is that we can do everything we’ve always wanted to do, everything we’ve always loved to do, everything that has made us happy on earth.  The other choice is that we can walk through the gate and go to be with God.  What do you choose?

That’s probably not how it works, either.  But that’s kind of the choice the world offers us, when you think about it.  There are a lot of times when we have the chance to do something that might very well make us happy, in the short term.  But we know it’s not what God wants us to do.  And so, we have a choice.  Do we do the thing that will make us happy in the short term?  Or do we hold firm to our faith and stay with God?  What do we choose?

We get many chances to make that choice.  None of us makes the right choice all the time.  But let’s dedicate ourselves to doing so.  Let’s dedicate ourselves to making the right choice.  Let’s make the choice to stay faithful to God.  It may not make us as happy in the short term.  But in the long term, it’ll be worth it.