Visions of Heaven
Ever since I was a teenager reading my beautiful old volume of Dante's "Divine Comedy" with its lavish Gustave Dore illustrations, I've been puzzled by the raw details that human authors (and illustrators) are able to give to their visions of Hell, but how Heaven tends to blur into an ecstatic white light. This could be that the Devil is indeed "in the details," or it could be that Hell is a bit closer to home for mortals and we have no qualms about trashing it with our prejudices or presumptions. Still, if Heaven is our inheritance, then we should feel comfortable speculating a bit about it.
I've heard it said that the three most important questions for any concious being are "Where did I come from?" "Why am I here?" and "Where am I going?" I love to prattle on about origins -- don't get me started on evolution, I can be quite a bore. The question of why we are here finds lots of fuel on this site, since the Church and its nature apparently constitute some significant portion of the answer.
Assuming for a moment that everyone reading this is going to Heaven (lovely thought, by the way -- if you have doubts, drop me a line and we can discuss it), what do you expect to find there? What do you expect it to be like? No fair merely quoting scripture, though it's fine to support your own vision with scripture.
To make this into a kind of ecumenical survey, it would help to reveal your church affiliation, if any. This can be short and sweet or not. My family and I go to a conservative Baptist church right now, but my wife and I were Episcopalians and Methodists before that and in the long, long ago I was a devout Cafeteria Pagan.
I'll chime in with my vision of Heaven once the ball starts rolling. Or sooner, if no one else does.
I've heard it said that the three most important questions for any concious being are "Where did I come from?" "Why am I here?" and "Where am I going?" I love to prattle on about origins -- don't get me started on evolution, I can be quite a bore. The question of why we are here finds lots of fuel on this site, since the Church and its nature apparently constitute some significant portion of the answer.
Assuming for a moment that everyone reading this is going to Heaven (lovely thought, by the way -- if you have doubts, drop me a line and we can discuss it), what do you expect to find there? What do you expect it to be like? No fair merely quoting scripture, though it's fine to support your own vision with scripture.
To make this into a kind of ecumenical survey, it would help to reveal your church affiliation, if any. This can be short and sweet or not. My family and I go to a conservative Baptist church right now, but my wife and I were Episcopalians and Methodists before that and in the long, long ago I was a devout Cafeteria Pagan.
I'll chime in with my vision of Heaven once the ball starts rolling. Or sooner, if no one else does.
posted by Rick Broussard at 9:10 AM
3 Comments:
Interesting question Rick. I think we will be lumious souls that spend the majority of our time injoying the bliss of adoring God face to face. i think we can bewith and love all the people that made an impact in our lives, even thoses we think hurt us. I think we can somehow see what is happening on earth and we can help people. I don't care much about what heaven actually looks like (do they have trees and birds...?)
Funny, I'm not sure I've ever tried to conjure an idea of what heaven might look like, and I think in my musings on it, the concept my mind keeps coming back to is that of being outside of the limitations of time. So even as we are contemplating God face to face, we are also present, literally, to everything that ever happened to us. What's the difference between a perfect, intact memory or idea of something and the experience itself? Of course, you might assume that the infinity and majesty of the experience of God and heaven would make all of our earthly memories just an infinitely small grain of sand ... but I don't buy that. I think our lives fit more deeply into God's plan than that. So in my imaginings of heaven, I can't help but include each eternal moment in this life. How the pain, fear and sorrow will fit along with the joy is something I can't imagine...but I can conceive.
Considering that Jesus, Himself, prayed in Gethsemane the truth that "eternal life" was knowing both Him and the Father, I don't get too caught up in the details of heaven. I believe it's there and have often stated, in somehwat jest, that my idea of it would be an old beagle dog with whom to walk the grounds the first thousand years or so. That sounds silly, I suppose, but anything else I might suggest would be just as much a picture of my imagination. I DO believe it's there, even as I believe the other destination exists; but, for me, it will be "knowing Him in His fulness" rather than merely "in the Spirit". The last verse of Isaiah, by the way, depending on your translation, gives witness to the possibility of our (those who make it through the "pearly gates") being able to look upon the Lake of Fire and viewing those who weren't that fortunate. And...I remain grounded in Pentecost even though I fell the herd has gone far afield in the last few decades............
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