Heavenഉദാഹരണം

 Think for a moment about the most beautiful places you’ve seen on earth. Maybe you’ve had the opportunity to visit a palm-fringed island in the South Pacific, or ski the Alps of Switzerland, or wander through the stark beauty of the Grand Canyon. 

Maybe it’s not a place at all. Maybe it’s a sunrise or a sunset, a starlit night, or seeing the face of your child or grandchild for the first time. There are so many incredible things to see on Earth.

But even the most beautiful of things on Earth pale to what we’ll experience when we first see Jesus and the beauty of heaven. He’s been preparing heaven for you and me, for all who believe. Can you imagine how wonderful, how beautiful, it’s going to be?

In Revelation chapters 21 and 22, we see heaven in a flyover, filled with amazing images, illustrations and metaphors. Heaven is beyond our comprehension and beyond our imagining, but it should not be beyond our contemplation.

We have long heard of the “pearly gates,” but they are really not pearly, they are pearl gates. One pearl. I find it curious that pearl is used, for a pearl is made from irritation. The creature inside the shell is irritated by a tiny grain of sand or debris, and as a result the creature secretes a fluid that surrounds the irritation, and it becomes a pearl. A pearl is birthed in pain. So these beautiful pearl gates of heaven remind us forever of the price that was paid at the cross! The pain of the cross! And the same nail-scarred hands that opened the gates of grace will open to us the great gates of glory!

There is a tremendous amount of ugliness and brokenness in our world. The earth is filled with broken human beings. And that’s because of the curse of sin. Sin has shattered the human condition, and as a result our world is in darkness.

But the beauty of heaven can also be described by what is not there rather than what is. There will be no more tears, terrors, death, crying, pain, suffering, or sin! That is a truly beautiful place.

Ultimately, the most beautiful thing your eyes will ever see won’t be the streets of gold or gates of pearl. It will be the beautiful face of Jesus.