The best, biggest, church service ever!
The greatest, closest, Christian camp ever!
These are two of our favourite images for heaven.
Worship and community.
And, for some, this sounds… heavenly.
They love to sing.
They love to hear the joint praise of a large group.
They love the intimacy generated from living in one another’s pockets.
They love the connection of sharing their lives with someone else and hearing their stories.
Some people love this.
Others, don’t.
For some, they will not love these things, they will just be indifferent.
Others will loathe them.
They put up with the singing, but draw little connection from it.
They will endure close contact with others, but will count down the hours until it has passed.
So, how do these believers connect with these heavenly images?
How do those, outside of the Christian bubble, connect with these images if they hear about them?
It may be callous for the worshipping loving camp devotees to hear… but some people will shirk away from these images. For the, this heaven would seem hellish.
So, is there an answer?
Should we abandon these images?
In short, no.
The bible, when speaking about the afterlife, does use these kinds of images. So we shouldn’t avoid them.
But, we should mine down into the significance of them.
What do they want to communicate about heaven?
At the core, it’s about connection.
Connection, uninhibited by sin.
As was intended.
Creator and created.
We will, no matter what form this specifically takes, be in the presence of God. Justice will completely reign. Evil and sun will have been completely defeated.
And yes, this could be associated with the heavenly tropes we trot out.
But, we can go slightly further.
We can connect other foretaste of heaven to those who don’t connect strongly with worship music or camping.
Heaven could have elements of a deep, thought-provoking sermon.
Heaven could have elements of an insightful book.
Heaven will encapsulate the grandest bush-walk.
But only to a point.
For all and any analogy of heaven will fall short.
Form this side of eternity, we are only ever granted a foretaste of what is to come. We only ever catch a glimpse.
But if we dogmatically stick to our narrow tract of heavenly images, then we will, inevitability, be selling the greatest reward short.
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