“Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here” (Philippians 1:23-24 The Message).
Some time ago newspapers told of an eight-year old boy with a troubled background who wrote a letter to God, addressed it to heaven, put a stamp on it and mailed it. As you probably know, letters which have insufficient address on them get sent to the dead letter office where they are usually disposed of; however, this letter was opened. The message read, “Dear God, what is it like to die? I just want to know. I don’t want to do it. Your friend, Michael.”
His troubled cry is a commentary on the violence which makes life fragile and uncertain with drive-by shootings, gangs, and terrorism. Life is cheap, which causes some to want to live it to the fullest, often throwing care to the wind because you never know what a day may hold, or else live in fear, wondering if someone’s knife or bullet has your name on it.
This is the world in which eight-year-olds are asking the sobering question, “Dear God, what is it like to die?” Yes, we know eight-year-olds should be thinking about life, not death, yet the reality is that both are part of life, and knowing that God sent His son to take away the fear of death, makes a big difference in how you live.
Because he knew that death is merely the transition into the presence of the Lord for God’s children, Paul could cry out, “O Death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). But anything that you have never experienced or don’t understand can be frightening—whether you are eight or eighty.
When Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians, he used the analogy of pitching a tent as you would do when you camp out. He spoke from his own experience, because Paul was a tentmaker.
He says that our earthly tent wears out, beaten by wind and weather, seams torn which can no longer be repaired. Then he says we have one which is eternal, made by God Himself. Here’s how he put it: “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1).
In his last week with the disciples Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for his followers—in His words: so that “you may be with me where I am.” This, of course, personalizes heaven and makes it real—not simply a nebulous “way-out-there-somewhere-sort of thing.” Heaven is a home, and for those who have been homeless, or who have wandered as a refugee, knowing that you are secure and will never lack anything is good news indeed.
When I am going to some part of the world I have never seen before, I start reading and investigating to find out what it’s like. I browse through travel books in a bookstore. I go on the Internet to find out what I can learn, and when it’s possible, I’ll talk with someone firsthand who can tell me what it’s like from personal experience. No other book in all the world can tell me what the Bible does about heaven, and only one person has ever been there and then came back from there to tell us what it’s like. His name is Jesus Christ.
At the end of C. S. Lewis’s book, The Chronicles of Narnia, all of the characters in the book die in a train accident. Lewis concludes, saying, “But the things that began to happen after that were so beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of the stories, but for them it was only the beginning of the real story.”
A closing thought. Michael, the eight-year-old who wrote the letter signed it, “Your friend, Michael.” How would you sign a letter to God? Think about it!
Resource reading: 1 Corinthians 15:52-58.
