What do you think heaven is like? As I kid, I’ll admit to being a little disappointed when a Sunday School teacher insisted that in heaven we would all wear white robes, sing all day long, and have wings. For someone for whom fishing and baseball were a passion, and could only sing two notes, which both were off key, that was not what I was hoping to hear.
Last week, a loved one I have known for much of my life recently asked what I though heaven was. I wasn’t certain if he was looking for a helpful explanation or reassurance, but it make me think about how in the world to give an appropriate answer. Saint John gets us as close as anyone with his vision of heaven, but was limited by language (the curse of Babel) and could only use words at his disposal to describe it. And what words do we have available that are adequate for something as eternal, limitless, and glorious as the presence of the God of creation? Where do we even begin to wonder about what we can’t imagine?
On a trip to Venice, Roxanne and I visited Murano, an island with nothing but glass factories. We experienced the incredible change of sand being melted into glass, attached to a long metal tube, and the breath of a glass blower gave a blob of molten glass a shape. Chemicals could be added to give color to that glass. To me, it brought to mind the image of Genesis where God breathed life into a lump of clay and the miracle of a living being. A glass blower in Murano sparked a connection as he gradually shaped a blob of glass, pushed and twisted it with tongs as he kept breathing into the tube, and suddenly he wound up with an incredible glass horse that seemed as perfect as DaVinci’s incredible statue of a horse. How can we jump from that to even imagine infinite perfection in the presence of God who created an ever-expanding universe, planets and tidal pools, wind and wave and arrived as a baby in a Bethlehem manger?
More and more I envision heaven not so much as a location (in our sense of the word) but being in the infinite, glorious, perfect presence of God in a face-to-face relationship of perfect love and peace that never ends. It will be the culmination of Jesus’ earthly birth day as he surrendered the infinite glory of heaven to be confined in an earthly body. For us it will be like a prisoner exchange, where we escape what limits us to earthly imperfections to be literally blown away by the breath of God’s spirit and united with pure light, unending love, indescribable joy, and a peace that lasts beyond what we can imagine.
Today I visited a gallery and saw something created by a master glass blower that I have no sense of how it could have been done, or have words to even describe it to someone else. If I multiply that by numbers greater than I can understand, and flavor it with the love of a manger and freedom of Easter, it is only the beginning of a tiny clue what is more beautiful, timeless, shapeless, glorious, and purer than anyone can imagine — perfectly heavenly love, joy, and peace!