So much more than pie in the sky when we die

There was a funeral today, at the church where I work.  Another aged saint of God jumped that last mysterious, triumphant hurdle and journeyed to God’s dwelling place, about which we have such little knowledge and  yet some of us are so sure, exists.  

I always feel the tiniest shred of envy.

Just after my son, Ben, died – for several years really, in gradually decreasing frequency, I thought a lot about heaven.  To be honest, I didn’t really want to be here.   I was just in such pain, not only from Bud’s death;  my suffering came from several other awful things which had happened within the space of a few months of him dying.  Longing for heaven was an escape mechanism. It was  the knowledge of what terrible grief I would inflict on my girls, which stopped me acting on an escape plan. I doubt I would have acted on it, but I can’t  be absolutely sure that if I hadn’t had them, I would have stayed around.  Sometimes, I even calculated how long I’d have to wait to end my life, without them being terribly affected by it’s closeness to their brother’s death. In my bewildered state, I used to think 6 years would be long enough.  Now, here we are 6.5 years past it and I realise it’s not nearly long enough.  If I was to die now, it would still have a terrible effect on the girls.  But I am no longer in so much pain, that suicide is an option.  And I am stronger now.  I don’t think of heaven as much.

But the promise of it is a constant presence.  I am as certain of it’s existence as I am of my own name.  A joyous expectancy accompanies me on my journey every day.

How do I know of it’s existence.  How can I be so sure I will go there when I die?  Because I have lived my life following the commands, the promptings and the promises of Christ, with His spirit-wind at my back.  Long ago, it ceased to be a head-knowledge Religion, and became a friendship with God;  a spiritual suffusing with His divinity, of all that I am, in as much (or as little sometimes) as I allow Him.

Suffering has woven his spirit into the very cloth of my existence.  I don’t just know Him in my head, I know Him as a sustaining presence in the creviced, exposed, ferocious cliff face of anguish.  He has broken my heart several times over, and mended it again with His own fullness.  I belong to Him.  He called me long ago.  And I followed;  through brokenness and travail;  trudgingly sometimes;  angry sometimes;  despairing sometimes.  Still, I’m following. 

How do I know heaven waits for me?  Because the One who promised it cannot go back on His word.  I have lived with my soul’s ear listening for it, and the gladsome eye of my spirit glancing at it. Every time I feel the love of God pass through me to an unlikely, unlovely soul, it leaves a forensic trace of heaven behind, like a fingerprint on my soul’s window pane. The spirit of God is an awesome, affecting, evidential power.  That’s how I know.

And my lovely son will be waiting.