Heaven Is A Wonderful Place

   My biggest fear - currently, ha - is earthquakes. It's a pretty illogical one because I live in the heartland of America, nowhere near a significant fault line. But I can blame it on the movie 2012. Ever since watching it, I have been in fear of apocalyptic earthquakes, volcanoes, cracks opening up in the middle of nowhere... etc. I never should have seen that movie.

   Even though that movie was fictional, and maybe even pointless to watch, there's a bit of truth in it. The world will really end someday. This earth we live on will cease to exist- it will be destroyed. Perhaps that is what my fear of earthquakes stems from; a sign of end times, and the end of life as we know it.

   When I was younger, perhaps 10 or 11, I sang in a quartet with three girls my age named Emily, Jamelia and Anna. The song went "Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace..." It was cute to say the least, my mom even videotaped it. That was years ago. Last night, I went to Anna's viewing. She died in a car accident. She wasn't texting, she wasn't on her phone, she had her seatbelt on. No one is sure what exactly happened, but nonetheless, Anna is gone. She was only 20 years old.

   Death is something all of us fear, at one time or another. "Death comes with a crawl, or he comes with a pounce..." you can't predict what moment you will die. You can't always predict how you will die. The death of a young person makes you stop and question life. You wonder what your end will be, you wonder what people will say at your own funeral or how many people will come. You start saying "I love you" more often, you take the time to resolve things. You don't want to miss a moment.

   But death isn't something to be fear! It is a rebirth, into everlasting life.

   I love the quote from C. S. Lewis' 'The Last Battle', which goes:

   "And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

   As a friend once said, "No one ever picks up a book, stops at the title page and says 'That was pretty good stuff! Lemme just read that again a few times...' Our lives are just the title page!"

   While we are appreciating the little things in our lives on earth, we ought to be building treasure in heaven. Right now we are earth-bound, but someday, we will be set free! It will be a joyous reunion.

   Anna, welcome to Chapter One of the Great Story. You surely know now that Heaven is a wonderful place.