Heaven is Our Home

Dear friends, life is filled with ups and downs, happy highs and lousy lows.  Christians are not exempt from difficult or sorrowful seasons, either.  Perhaps we even experience it more than others since we carry a target on our backs for Christ.  However, a quote that I LOVE declares that “peace is not the absence of trouble, but the presence of Christ.”

How can we have peace?  How is it that we can somehow cheerfully endure this hard, hard life?  Let me remind you of 2 Corinthians 4:16-17:

“So we’re not giving up.  How could we!  Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.  These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us.  There’s far more here than meets the eye.  The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow.  But the things we can’t see now will last forever.”

Heaven is our home.  Jesus Christ has gone ahead to prepare a place for you and for me and for all His people.  It will be a place where there is no more weeping, no more death, no more pain.  I don’t believe we will exist in Heaven in some kind of subconscious state, but that we will actively commune with other believers, all the saints that have gone before, and Jesus Himself––our glorious and faithful Defense.

Soon and very soon, we will have forgotten what it means to be in pain.  Death will be a mere memory.  There won’t exist a word for “loss” or “lonely” or “disease.”  But instead, all these earthly trials will have earned us many crowns, all of which we will humbly lay at Jesus’ feet.  And our vocabulary will be filled with the words “life,” “whole,” “restoration,” “laugh,” “peace,” “beauty,” and lots and lots of the name “Jesus.”

So take heart.  Our future is bright, and the One who walks with us is good.

Josh  x