Heaven: Real vs. Imagined

Certainly I can't be the only one who's experienced that ridiculous snowballing of speculations that happens when waiting for something without knowing many details. Let's say I have a good friend, one of my closest whom I've known for years—someone I'd trust with my life. He calls and asks me to  lunch. I get to the restaurant and notice I have a voice mail. It's him, saying he's going to be about a half hour late because of some “unexpected business.” 

After the first ten minutes I wonder, “What kind of 'unexpected business?'” Then I remember that's the type of thing undercover agents always say in spy movies. During the next ten my imagination begins to race through a series of increasingly absurd images: “What if he really is a secret agent? And not for the U.S.? Maybe he's an undercover Russian? Maybe he's working for the mob? Maybe the Russian mob!—just using our 'friendship' to get information” (It never occurs to me I don't know anything). During the next ten minutes I start to picture him late at night, wearing sunglasses nonetheless, at some undisclosed location speaking in Russian on the phone to his commanding comrade, using secret code to plan the next “drop.” Then my emotions kick in. I'm almost angry, and start to wonder if all my friends might be just as duplicitous. I start to think of how hopeless and lonely a world it would be if that were the case. But before I imagine any more, my friend walks up to the table at the restaurant, takes a seat as he tells me he's late because of an extra long line at the post office, and then says he's paying for lunch to thank me for always being a good friend.

The thing that gets me in all this is the emotional effect. Once these groundless speculations hit a certain point, I actually begin to feel a tinge of anger and loneliness. And then when my friend walks in and pops my ludicrous bubble with reality, I feel a sense of inner embarrassment, saying to myself, “How stupid can I be!? Why does my imagination conjure up such craziness! Where does this stuff come from?”

It’s going to be like this for a lot of us when we first get to Heaven. All our lives different voices have whispered, and sometimes shouted, that Heaven is fiction, that believing in it as a real place where we’ll live with God for eternity is like believing we could really stay at Santa’s house if we could make it to the North Pole. These voices strike at our emotions more than our reason, especially so in certain circumstances. Our grief over the loss of a loved one, or discouragement over rampant evil in the world makes us feel vulnerable. Ceasing the opportunity, the voice of unreason kicks in, and our imaginations run like a scolded dog into a busy street, darting to and fro, scared and senseless. Then doubts begin to snowball, and with them our fears and insecurities, and we begin to wonder, “Maybe there’s not…” “What if there’s nothing…” 

Oh but the day is coming when we, through Christ, will open our eyes in Reality on the other side of our last breath. And when we finally drop our suitcases in the foyer of our real Home, not only will we, as Paul says, know fully as we are fully known, but, deep down, we’ll realize that we’ve always known. (Evidence abounds here and now: Jesus in history, our relentless concern with beauty and morality. Why all this if there's nothing after?) That day will make all those that came before seem like a dream in comparison. And in the midst of that raging joy with Him, maybe we will remember those hollow voices of doubt and feel a little embarrassment, saying to ourselves, “How stupid was I!? Why did my imagination conjure up such craziness!? Where did those doubts come from?”

MM