Heaven

I've had two friends go there in the last month, and it's made me think about that kingdom differently. It is easy to think of heaven as where old people we love sit around having tea and cookies and wait for us to show up. Today I remembered that my ninety-something in-laws and aunts who crossed over in the past few years aren't old anymore. Hard to know what they are like now, but not old, I bet.

It all occurred to me as some fallen walnuts crunched under my feet as I walked down the street in the rain. The crunch of nuts on the sidewalk is one of the fine pleasures of living in this world in this season. I wondered if our young friend Grant who just died suddenly four days ago would miss that feeling or look back on it as nothing compared to the pleasures of the kingdom we were made for. Probably neither, exactly. I suspect that the pleasures of life on earth will be seen in a new and brighter light and will actually be greater in the remembering of them than they were in the experience of them. Maybe. Of course, I think that in heaven if we want to crunch nuts under our feet, we'll get to. Please, this is not being flip. It just becomes more necessary to think about the next phase as more people I know move into it.