How often have you heard people say that heaven is just “pie in the sky when you die”, a fanciful idea that distracts us from the more important concerns of everyday life? This is ironic when we remember how experiencing heaven in the midst of everyday life prompted so many people in the Bible to start confronting the problems around them.
For example, think of Moses’s encounter with the burning bush in the wilderness. God called out to him from the bush, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5), then instructed him to lead the people of Israel out from slavery under their Egyptian masters. Moses found himself unexpectedly in God’s presence, in a place where heaven and earth touched for a time, and it changed the course of his life. Moses would no longer be a simple sheep herder: he would shepherd God’s people though a defining moment in their history.
Several hundred years earlier, Moses’s forefather Jacob experienced the Lord’s presence at a place called Bethel (Genesis 28). He had a vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder reaching from earth to heaven and perceived that he was at “the gate of heaven.” There, the Lord promised to bless all the families of earth through Jacob’s descendants, and Jacob vowed that the Lord would be his God, forging a crucial link in the chain of events that led to the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the whole world is indeed being blessed.
Heaven is usually unseen, but when we realise that it is a present reality and that we too can have a life-changing encounter with the living God, it takes on a new significance for life now. When we understand that heaven is not simply a post-mortem reward for good people, the notion that it is just “pie in the sky” itself seems rather fanciful.
There is another saying that some people are “too heavenly minded to be any earthy use.” However, I hope that our Learning4Life morning this Sunday will make it clear that setting our “minds on things that are above” should have an immensely practical effect on the way we live in the present (see Colossians 3). We will be welcoming a special guest speaker, Dr James Paul, who has been a palliative care doctor and is now the senior leader of the English branch of the L’Abri Fellowship. He will introduce us to the theme of his book, What on Earth is Heaven?, and explain not only what we can expect after we die (which is much better than pie!) but how the hope of heaven is relevant to our lives as Christians here and now.
Please come and join us for an enjoyable morning of discussion and learning together!
Matthew
Ministry Team Member