HEAVEN IS FAR BETTER

One summer my family and I went on holiday to a little seaside town. I enjoyed walking past all the different boats and reading their names, like: “The Codfather”, “Unsinkable II”, “Buoyoncé” and “She Got the House”.

But one name made me think a little deeper: “Heaven Can Wait”. I guess that name kind of sums up how we might feel when we’re doing something we love. The people on that boat probably felt heaven had little to offer compared to the feel of sailing freely across the sea. To be honest, sometimes I find I’m enjoying my life so much that I’m not all that sure about the idea of heaven. But when that happens, I need to take some time in the last chapters of Revelation. Because the greatness of heaven isn’t described in the stuff we’ll do there or the things we’ll have.

What makes heaven better is that it is God’s home. We will literally live with Him. “We will be his people, and God himself will be with [us] and be [our] God” (REVELATION 21:3). And He will personally “‘wipe every tear from [our] eyes.

There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (V.4).

It’s great to have a good life here. God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 TIMOTHY 6:17), but let’s not get so attached to it that we lose all interest in heaven. It’s Jesus, not stuff and experiences, who really makes life worth living. To be with Him forever should be the most exciting thought we can have!

Completing the picture . . .

Heaven will be the fulfilment of the Old Testament temple, which had the inner Most Holy Place (EXODUS 26:33-34), representing God’s presence with His people. Once a year one priest could enter. That was it. But this was “a copy and shadow of what is in heaven” (HEBREWS 8:5). In heaven Jesus will “present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (JUDE 1:24) so that we can stand in the very presence of God forever, enjoying Him and His love for us perfectly. When he saw heaven, John wrote: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (REVELATION 21:22).