Looking forward to eternity? I am!

I know I've been quiet for over a month but I've been processing a lot of things. God has given me the opportunity to hear and read some things that cannot be taken lightly. Indeed they are exciting, overwhelming and deserve much thought. I've been reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. Especially if you're like me and have this fear-awe relationship with God where the fear is not the healthy kind but makes you want to win His love with good deeds. It's not a book I can read overnight. Every chapter makes me set the book down and think. Most days I can't get through an entire chapter without pausing.

Last month we had a guest speaker at Church. There are not many people in this world that can start their preaching by saying this: "In 1989, I was on my way back from a church conference when an 18-wheeler struck my Ford Escort head on. I was killed instantly - pronounced dead by four sets of EMTs." Don Piper spent 90 minutes in heaven and then it was God's will for him to return to tell his story. It is a beautiful story in spite of the years of pain and suffering where his body was literally put back together with surgery after surgery. But that was not what stayed with me after the service. There was something else he said. When he got to heaven he was received by people that had all played a part in getting him there. I can think of many people that would be there to receive me if they went before me. But who would I receive? The list shrinks. Greatly.

The second thing he said that I find so hard to forget was that in heaven everyone was ageless, blemishless, perfect. The only one with scars was Jesus Christ. He had to have those scars because that's what lets us enter heaven. I think about how we run after futile things to make our earthly bodies perfect. Even though we know that nothing works. Age-perfecting moisturizer? Scar remover? Stretchmark minimizer? Anti-frizz serum? I'm glad I'll look perfect one day, just as God intended me to be. It's just not going to be this side of the river.