Heaven is real

"Heaven is for real." As my father in law plopped the book down on the table, I was surprised to see him reading. In my 11 years of knowing him, he had never recommended one book to me. This peeked my interest. After 2 pages I started to shift gears. I started do do what I do when a book gets me thinking. I began reflecting about my own experience with heaven. One of the reasons that I love the book of Revelation is that the author clearly has seen a picture of heaven, and the author is determined to give his revelation to the reader. Heaven is always something that wants to be shared. This makes the claim of heaven harder to refute. There is such a swell of narrative, throughout Christian history, of folks sharing their experience of heaven. This alone is a persuasive argument for the reality of heaven. Jesus said, very clearly, that "I go before you to prepare a place." The place that He is preparing is "heaven." Jesus was very clearly a man that was headed in a direction. His direction was towards "another place." 

Thia picture is a little slice of heaven. Josie was in heaven for her birthday. Heaven is filled with people, with community, and with strangers. Heaven is not private. If there is anything true about heaven it is this fact. Heaven is communal. And so I hesitate to share my story, because it is intensely private. But like other writers in the history of the Christian church, I am compelled to share. Heaven is a shared experience. Paul speaks of his own private experience of heaven when he says, in the letter that he wrote to the Corinthians:





"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up in the third heaven, whether in body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise."

Paul was frustrated by "thorns of the flesh." Paul was frustrated by his actions, and he famously said,
" I dont do what I want to do, and I do what I do not want to do."But Paul was also frustrated by his experience of a thorn. I am not sure what was at the heart of that thorn, but it certainly was a bitter experience of anguish that led him to write those words. The thorn he experienced was "real." Thorns are not mental. Thorns are not only cerebral, they are physical and spiritual. Thorns might travel through the mind, but by their very nature, they stick into the body. And so Paul, dealing with thorns, dealt with his "real experience" of loss and anguish in the presence of God.

But in this moment in paradise he was captured by the peace and the serenity of the very God that ransomed his life from slavery. He was able to forget about his thorn, so to speak.



I had such an experience. When I was just out of college, I sat next to a lake outside of Columbia, South Carolina in the year of 1997. It was August. I was sitting on a park bench. I was praying with my friend. As I lifted my head, after praying, it was as if my prayer continued, in techno-color. When I lifted my head, I looked out on Lake Murray. When I looked, I saw heaven. I saw an infinite amount of space projecting outwards from my gaze. I saw birds flying and layers upon layers of wildlife flapping their wings, delighting in the presence of peace. The striking thing about the scene was that it to propel me into a timeless space of life that lasted forever.

My vision came just a day before I was captured by Christ. The vision that I had was real. Ever since that vision, I have felt a deeper calm inside of myself now that I know that heaven is real. If I have a day that is manic, or a day that is depressed, each of them are all held within the balance of heaven. Heaven collapses all the evil and dross from our world out, and lets the light of the world out onto the canopy of creation. One day there will be a final consummation, and that day will be just absolutely wonderful. I can go on and be anchored by the glorious reality that a day awaits that every morsel of sadness will be brought to glad fruition.