What is Heaven?
In Heaven…
1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness,
But we don’t desire heaven and we fear death because we fear heaven because we think all the good stuff to be done is here on earth and heaven is just rest, you know R.I.P. What will we do in Heaven?
Let me suggest three things we will do in heaven:
1. Understand our earthly life by God’s knowledge
2. Share in all other human lives
3. Endless Exploration into God and the New Universe
First, we will review our past life with divine understanding and appreciation of every single experience, good and evil:
This corresponds to the first stages of Heaven known as Purgatory.
· It might consist of moral reeducation
· rather than mere punishment,
· rehabilitation rather than retribution.
Unlimmited Love
Second, we do the same to other’s lives from within
· We will know them more intimately and completely than we could ever know our most intimate friend on earth
· b/c we share God’s knowledge of one another
The Communion of Saints will be even more interesting than
· Human love on earth
· Think of the first time you fell in love
o The joy of learning about another person, and doing all good things with them.
o Yet without out all the imperfections, and not just with one person, but with all people!
We will have the ability to know every human that ever lived
· Even more intimately than we knew our closest friend on earth.
Who would you like to become best friends with in Heaven?
· Your spouse, or son or daughter
· Maybe a friendship cut short here on earth
o I think of my two best friends killed in high school and college
· My guardian angel
· Who do you want to meet?
Unlimmited Life
We will not only explore our own lives and the lives of others - We will begin the endlessly fascinating task of exploring, learning and loving all the facets of the inexhaustible nature of God.
The Contemplation of God is not boring
Heaven will be
· Dynamic rather than static
· Exploring rather than staring at God
· Endless beginnings rather than merely the end
· Because the whole world will be renewed and transformed
The material universe itself is destined to be transformed
Heaven will be a “New Heavens and a New Earth” 2 Pet. 3:13
“New Heavens and New Earth” means that
· Every good thing on earth will be in heaven
Philippians 3:21 For us, our homeland is in heaven and from heaven comes the savior we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which he can subdue the whole universe.
Out of the Shadows and into the Light
From The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis chapters fifteen and sixteen
· Drawn into a stable
· Set the scene with the end of the world
· Closing of the stable door
· Their sadness at the loss of everything good in Narnia
· Bigger on the inside than it was on the outside
Then they all went forward together, always Westward, for that seemed to be the direction Aslan had meant when he cried out, “Further up and further in.” They kept on stopping to look round and to look behind them, partly because it was so beautiful but partly also because there was something about it which they could not understand.
“Peter,” said Lucy, “where is this, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know,” said the High King. “It reminds me of somewhere but I can’t give it a name. Could it be somewhere we once stayed for a holiday when we were very, very small?”
“It would have to have been a jolly good holiday,” said Eustace. “I bet there isn’t a country like this anywhere in our world. Look at the colors! You couldn’t get a blue like the blue on those mountains in our world.”
Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground. “Kings and Queens,” he cried, “we have all been blind.
We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all – Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.”
“But how can it be?” said Peter…. “We saw it all destroyed and the sun put out.”
“And it’s all so different,” said Lucy.
“The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia…You need not mourn over Narnia. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.”
Further Up and Further In
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…
He shook his mane and sprang forward into a great gallop – a Unicorn’s gallop, which in our world, would have carried him out of sight in a few moments.
But now a most strange thing happened. Everyone else began to run, and they found, to their astonishment, that they could keep up with him…The air flew in their faces as if they were driving fast in a car with the top down…Faster and faster they raced, but no one got hot or tired or out of breath. If one could run without getting tired, I don’t think one would ever want to do anything else.
The Unicorn cried out: “Don’t stop. Further up and further in! Take it in your stride.”
So they ran faster and faster till it was more like flying than running, and even the Eagle overhead was going no faster than they. And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and faster than ever down the other side, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountain lakes as if they were living speedboats, till at last at the far end of one long lake which looked as blue as turquoise, they saw a green hill. It’s sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall: but above the wall rose the branches of trees whose leaves looked silver and their fruit like gold.
“Further up and further in,” roared the Unicorn, and no one held back…Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. – “Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?”
But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open. “Welcome, in the Lion’s name. Come further up and further in.”
This is fiction
· but it certainly helps us think about the Heaven
· and we must think about it because that reality charges everything here with eternal significance and that is hope.