Life After HeavenSample

That Place

At age twenty, as the result of a flawed vaccine and a bad reaction to one medicine used to treat me, I died. Suddenly I found myself flying through a white tunnel until I arrived at a rolling green meadow with a massive oak tree in the foreground. In that place, I felt secure and peaceful.

Then Jesus showed up and started talking with me. He reviewed my life, telling me not only what had happened but why. His words were like salve, healing places where I had been hurt or broken. Eventually, though, he said, “You cannot stay.”

The next thing I knew, I was flying back through the white tunnel, and then a nurse was leaning over me. I was in a hospital. I had been in a coma for five weeks.

There’s a certainty for me that came with that experience. I know what it will be like when I go back. I have seen heaven. It is still fully real to me. Still fresh.

Even as I look forward to returning to That Place, I feel passionate and deeply called to be fully here. As much as I long to return, it fuels me to see God’s work and presence here, where we live and work and weep and play and receive tastes of his presence and of heaven. I want my life to be a preview of coming attractions. I want people around me to get a flash of heaven, a glimpse of what Jesus is like and what the Father is like.

I recognize the impossibility of recreating that perfect place on this imperfect earth. But I believe we should try. I know it is what we were made for and what all of us want. Everybody. God’s kingdom can be seen in part now, even though the totality of that joy has to wait. You and I can see glimpses of it and can welcome the kingdom of heaven that Jesus preached so often about while he walked the earth.

We can feel it now. We can taste it now, even if it’s not the full thing.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” I think we’re supposed to have that. What’s more, I think we can.

What do you look forward to about going to heaven?

How does the reality of heaven impact your day-to-day life?