Hoping for Heaven in a Hellish World

“I hope it’s soon.”

When I was in fifth grade I remember asking my dad when he thought Jesus was going to come back.  You know, just your typical Friday night conversation for a conservative Christian family.  He sighed and paused for a beat before responding in a tired voice,

“I don’t know.  But I hope it’s soon.”

I was sitting in the back seat of the car and we drove on in silence while I pondered his answer.  I wouldn’t have said it out loud but I remember thinking,

Are you kidding me?

There was so much I wanted to do!  I wanted to learn how to drive!  I wanted to kiss a boy!  I wanted to go to the sleepover at Beth’s, make it to the State Championships in gymnastics, and read the next Sweet Valley Twins book.   My options seemed endless.  I couldn’t even fathom wanting Jesus to come back.  Ever.

There were two things at play for me that day in the car with my dad.  

First, I hadn’t lived long enough.  

My dad was forty-two at the time of that conversation and had already lived through things like the Vietnam War and the assassinations of JFK, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy.  He’d already lost friends, family and his own father to death.  He’d seen ugliness and fear and sadness that I hadn’t yet seen.   When I was ten, things like the Challenger explosion and Chernobyl were still small, far-off blips on an otherwise occupied radar.

There were so many things I hadn’t yet seen. I hadn’t seen any of my own friends or family members die yet.   And I certainly hadn’t yet seen any of my friends’ children die.  I hadn’t seen 9/11 or the Iraq War.  I hadn’t seen the shelling of the Gaza strip or the Rwandan genocide.  I hadn’t seen my mom in the ICU or my grandparents in the throes of death.  I hadn’t seen the orphanage where my nephew lived for the first year of his life.  I hadn’t heard about teenagers being shot to death for playing their music too loud at the gas station or 11-year-olds killed on the playground by police officers.  I hadn’t felt the floor drop out beneath my feet at the news of Columbine, Virginia Tech or Sandyhook.  I hadn’t seen Syrian toddlers lying dead on Turkish beaches or the burials of Ukrainian children.  At ten years old, I could scarce imagine such things.

Second, my understanding of Heaven was undeveloped and entirely erroneous.  

At that age I imagined Heaven to be a vast, colorless space where we would all sit in front of God who was inordinately large; seated and glowing on an enormous throne.  We didn’t move.  We just sat in a perpetual state of other-worldly awe. I was also under the impression that I would no longer recognize or know my mom, dad, sister or brother; much less my beloved dog.  I’m not sure how I managed to conjure up a vision so unbearably bleak but I was certainly in no hurry to hasten the day to it.

I think my vision of Heaven was desolate and dreary because my understanding of God was desolate and dreary.  As a child I imagined God to be watching over me with a constantly wagging finger and a tsk tsk tsk whenever I strayed from the path of righteousness which felt like a daily, if not hourly, occurrence.  I had an amazing sense of my own wickedness as a child and it was only in my twenties that my theology swelled to include the belief that I am held in the mind of God by a love so vast and capacious it’s incomprehensible.

Once my perception of God changed, so too did my perception of Heaven.  My awareness of God’s love spun outward and stretched wide and I began to see Heaven enfolded therein.  Those spaces in my imagination that were once bland and lifeless began to fill in with color and life and zest.  The book of Revelation, while certainly confusing in places, gives us so rich a vision and so grand a view that it’s nearly impossible not to long for such a place.   God will wipe the tears from our eyes.  All of our mourning and grief and anger and sadness will be carried away by the boundless, ineffable love of God.  Death will lose its sting and all things will be made new.

The birth of Jesus was the in-breaking of Heaven here on earth.  At Christmas time each year we recognize and celebrate that Heaven has come close.  It has come close but it has not yet come in full.   If we’re paying attention, though, we can see it.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning said,

“Earth’s crammed with Heaven.  
And every common bush afire with God.”

Earth is crammed with Heaven.  It’s why we love it so.  It’s why we cling so tenaciously to life.  When our breath catches at the sight of the orange-red leaves of October against a gray autumnal sky; when we hunker down by the fire with our kids on a windy night; when we cheer and jump and scream watching our team score the winning goal; when we sip the most perfect espresso or raise our glass in a toast with friends; when we read a good book, make bread or love or art, this is Heaven.   These things are the signposts of God’s abiding love and they give us a glimpse of what will one day come in full.

It makes sense then that when I see ugliness and despair so desperate and wild that it feels as though I might not resurface, I long most earnestly for Heaven.   When my anguish and my grief are so great and the clenching grip of fear squeezes my heart, it’s then that I search most ardently for those places of joy and beauty and incandescence.   It’s when I understand my dad’s sentiment most keenly.

The word maranatha is used just once in the Bible and there is some dispute about it’s meaning.  It could be translated, “Our Lord has come!” or it could mean, “Come, Lord!”   If we take both meanings together, the word feels rich with the hope for Heaven.   Heaven is here, the Lord has come!  Heaven is not here;  come, Lord!   It’s the tension of the two that can be hard to hold.  The beauty in the world and the depravity.  The joy and the anguish.  But hold it we must and it’s in the holding that we are pulled close and hemmed in by the boundless love of God.  Maranatha!

Other Posts on Faith

A Song of Lament

What the Church Can Learn From the YMCA

Theology of Bad Things