Testimony Tuesday

I once saw a movie or video clip that made a lasting impression on me.  They first showed the view while walking through the streets of a specific city or town.  It was dirty, scary, and broken.  Then they showed the view at night from a mountain.  Lights everywhere, something mysterious, breathtakingly beautiful.  The same city but different viewpoints, different perspectives.

My view of heaven has been very limited.  Maybe it’s like that with many people.  I remember thinking previously, what are we going to do all the time for eternity? –almost worried that it is not going to be great at all.  For how long can one sing and pray? I thought maybe if we get in heaven, we will change somehow to spiritual beings that do not mind floating on clouds, playing a harp and singing all day.

When you lose two people very close to you, one thinks about heaven and wants to know more about heaven.  I keep on telling people how God sends me people, songs, Scripture, books, and teachings to make my sorrow easier.  I am overwhelmed with all the things he sends my way to make my life easier and better.  I am not the person I used to be.  I have more depth, more layers, and more thickness.  I have grown. I thank God for that.  He did not want me to have this limited view on heaven. For how we view heaven and life after death impacts how we live here and now—and also how we process and experience death of our loved ones.  So I saw a teaching of Chip Ingram on the real heaven and read glimpses of the book by Randy Alcorn called Heaven.  And what an impact that has made.

The night just after I found out my son Kaleb passed away at 39 weeks due to a knot in his cord, God said one thing to me in my spirit: our life here on earth is just a speckle in comparison to eternity.  This truth has grown in me and has helped me when I felt hopeless and broken.  My new revelation regarding heaven has added to this truth and has given me more than hope: excitement for our life after death.

One aspect of my loss that was and is extremely hard for me to accept is that Kaleb has died prematurely and that I thought he couldn’t live his purpose, the calling he was created for.  Maybe it is so hard for me because his life had so much promise.  I felt in my spirit that he had a big calling on his life.  But the truth is that life doesn’t end when our bodies die.

Even though I am a Christian, I did not make this truth part of my life, part of my thoughts, especially when I lost Kaleb.  Maybe it is the enemy that wants to cloud our view.  But the truth is, we are going to live, we are going to have purpose, we are going to have new bodies on a new earth, which is going to be a physical, tangible place.  Heaven is going to come down on this new earth and this new earth is going to be similar to how it was before sin entered into this world, in the garden of Eden.  So there are going to be life, animals, interaction between humans, relationships and companionship with God.  God is going to be with us.  Face-to-face.  There is going to be no sin, no pain, no sickness, no death, no injustice, no fear.  No more crying.  We are going to eat, drink, work, have purpose, have roles, serve.  We are going to do what we were created to do and gifted to do.  This world we are living now is not our home.  We are going to be restored and the earth is going to be restored too.  Our relationship with God is going to be restored.  Life is going to be perfect.  It almost sounds impossible and too good to be true.

Kaleb, therefore, is still going to live on the new earth and do and be who he was created to be. He will still have purpose and use his talents and live what he was called to do. He maybe has lost the chance to live purposefully on this fallen earth, but he is going to live for eternity on the new earth. I will still be able to have a relationship with him.  I do not know what the nature of our relationship will be, whether or not I will still be his mother, but he will know me and I will know him.  The enemy has not won. I am going to do everything possible to stand on God’s promise that he will use every hardship and use it to create something good.  Something good will come from losing him for this earth.

Getting this glimpse of how heaven is going to be must change us.  It must change how we live.  Our minds can no longer be only on our day-to-day walk, struggles, or pain. It will not be wise to focus on this speckle, if our life on the new earth and new heaven will be so much more and eternal. How we live here will have a direct influence on our life in eternity, but we cannot allow the sorrow and the pain of this world to overshadow us.

Every now and then, God shows me the bigger picture: the beautiful lights, the breathtaking view. Even though I get dragged down to the gutters where the streets are dirty, people are hurting and life is scary, I can go up the mountain and remember the bigger picture: God’s plan, being face-to-face with Him, our new earth and the perfect life that awaits us. This is called hope.

– Nanki

Hope Mom to Kaleb

 

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