Cody Beeber
We all have probably thought about what happens to us when we die. We have all encountered people who have died and wonder what is happening with their soul right now? Are they in purgatory right now and for how long? How long will I be in purgatory? Am I really worthy enough to go to heaven? What if I am not?
These are all scary and overwhelming thoughts, but we can eventually find peace in the fact that God loves us and desires for us to not be separated from Him. So if God desires for us to be in heaven with Him, then what is heaven like? What is our life like when we dwell in the house of the Lord for endless days?
This thought was troubling me one day. I felt a resistance in my heart when faced with the fact that I will be living in perfection for eternity. I oddly like my life on earth. I kind of like having good and bad days. I kind of like experiencing both pleasure and pain. Sometimes the imperfections of life make life more perfect in my eyes. If heaven only has goodness, only has happiness, only has objective beauty, then would I really enjoy it? Why would this heaven even accept me?
I was praying with this disturbance in my heart for an hour. It was really bothering me that my heart didn’t desire heaven without hesitation. But then I really looked at Jesus on the cross. I truly saw the wounds and injustice of His crucifixion. I could see how much life on earth didn’t make sense. How is it that the most perfect man should die the painful death that the rest of the world desires to take instead? As much as I enjoy my life on earth, I realized that I do not desire to be where sin is. I don’t want to contribute to the weight of the cross. As long as I am on earth, I will keep sinning and keep drilling nails into my savior and there is nothing I can do about it. I finally realized that I want to be in heaven, because heaven is the one place where I can no longer hurt Jesus.
We hear a very similar message in 1 John 2:15-17. He writes, “ Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” Our purpose in life is to desire unity with God and living in heaven. Anything the world offers us that separates us from God should be rejected without hesitation. God freely created us out of love and died for us out of love, so it is only right and just to love Him with our whole being which is only possible in our heavenly home.
