“Encourage one another, build one another up—more and more so as you hear the clock ticking and see the best Day ever getting really close.” (pp 1Thess.5:11+ Heb.10:25).
Heavenly Father, we will soon realize that whatever we thought heaven will be like—our bar is way, way too low; our imagination is too monochromatic and undersized; and our hopes about heaven have been too shackled and shaped by our fallenness and unbelief. Eternity will be beautiful, bountiful, and bodacious beyond our wildest dreams, best theology, and ability to conceive what you’ve prepared for us. Hallelujah, and thank you.
A nano-second into our first unfiltered, unfettered glimpse of Jesus (1Jn.3:1-3), we’ll also realize that your grace is 10,000 times more amazing that we currently realize. We’ll also understand that you intended us to live, (before our death), with more peace, freedom, and joy—more “holy-I-could-care-less-ness” about things that that presently bug and bind us.
This is all SO real to me as I think about how many of friends/acquaintances of mine have passed into eternity in the past year—some half my age. And there are several people dear to me who are carrying what our world calls a “terminal” illness. This is more of a “wake-up-and-smell-the-Gospel” call than it is sobering, scary, and saddening to me.
The perspective-metaphors you’ve given us in your Word about life before heaven are “mist, vapor, a shadow, and withering grass.” Thank you, and may these images impact us a lot more—even for the remainder of 2025. We’re fixing to be, (or not be), with people we call family, friend, neighbor, etc. Free us to see each other with eyes of compassion through the lens of mercy by the calendar of grace with the Day in view. Unknot us and de-rigid us, Father, gentle and soften us. We need to hold each other more than we need to hold grudges. So Very Amen.
