In my reading of “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis one phrase particularly struck my interest, “… Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” This quote means that we become so absorbed in the pleasures of this life that we don’t even stop and think about how great Heaven will be. Like all models, the example in this quote isn’t perfect, but it still proves the point.
During my Young Peoples meetings at church, we would often get on the topic of Heaven and what it will be like. We had so many questions: Will we recognize our friends?, “What will we look like?, What will we do there?, and the list continues. For most of the questions, we couldn’t come up with an answer because the Bible doesn’t tell us everything about Heaven. Part of the reason for this is because we wouldn’t be able to understand how wonderful Heaven is during our lives on earth. I remember my minister once told our class that God doesn’t tell us everything about Heaven because then we would be too excited to get there. What an amazing thought! God doesn’t tell us what our future home will be like because if we knew, that would be all that we would be able think about.
In my life it’s hard to imagine what Heaven will be like. One thing that seems so amazing is that there will be no more suffering or death, and that’s so hard for me to grasp. The most important factor is that Heaven means we will get to spend the rest of eternity in glorifying God our Creator. Even though it’s difficult for us to understand the greatness of Heaven, we must step away from the mud pies long enough to realize that God has something much greater planed for us in the future.
I enjoy your take on our approach to discussion on Heaven. Instead of jumping to the "Pearly Gates" theory, you, like Lewis, capture the symbolism that is intended to remain as such. The point, for me, in not to day dream about what Heaven will be like in the sense that I cannot wait to be free from all this wickedness. (I cannot, but that's not my point here).
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that Lewis' point is to act as holy and heavenly, which is to be godly, NOW here on earth as best we can. When we pray for this Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven, then we begin to bring it on. You're correct, the Bible doesn't tell us every thing for a reason. God's purpose for our lives is not instant gratification (repeat that a lot!), but rather eternal relationship with Him.
I agree with how we tend to cling to things of the world even though we have heaven to look forward to. We work so hard to build up a lot of money and experiences but in the end it really won't matter.
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