I Shall Rise
I shall rise from the dead, from the prostration, from the prosternation of death, and never miss the sun, which shall be put out, for I shall see the Son of God, the Sun of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall rise from the grave, and never miss this city, which shall be nowhere, for I shall see the city of God, the new Jerusalem. I shall look up and never wonder when it shall be day, for the angel will tell me that time shall be no more, and I shall see and see cheerfully that last day of judgment, which shall have no night, never end, and be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began. –John Donne
Father at the Game
Some years ago Columbia University had a great football coach by the name of Lou Little. One day Lou had a boy try out for the varsity team who wasn’t really very good. But Lou noticed that there was something unique about him—while he wasn’t nearly good enough to make the team, he had such irrepressible spirit and contagious enthusiasm that Lou thought, “This boy would be a great inspiration on the bench. He’ll never be able to play, but I’ll leave him on the team to encourage the others.”
As the season went on, Lou began to develop a tremendous admiration and love for this boy. One of the things that especially impressed him was the manner with which the boy obviously cared for his father. Whenever the father would come for a visit to the campus, the boy and his father would always be seen walking together, arm in arm, an obvious indication of an exceptional bond of love between them. They could always be seen on Sunday going to and from the university chapel. It was obvious that theirs was a deep and mutually shared Christian faith. Then, one day, a telephone call came to Coach Little. He was informed that the boy’s father had just died—would he be the one to tell the boy? With a heavy heart, Lou informed the boy of his father’s death, and he immediately left to go home for the funeral.
A few days later, the boy returned to the campus, only two days before the biggest game of the season. Lou went to him and said, “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?” And to the coach’s astonishment, the boy said, “Let me start the game on Saturday!” Lou was taken aback. He thought, “I can’t let him start—he’s not good enough.” But he remembered his promise to help and said, “All right—you can start the game,” but he thought to himself, “I’ll leave him in for a few plays and then take him out.” The day of the big game arrived. To everyone’s surprise, the coach started this boy who had never played in a game all season. But imagine even the coach’s surprise when, on the very first play from scrimmage, that boy was the one who single-handedly made a tackle that threw the opposing team for a loss. The boy went on to play inspired football play after play. In fact, he played so exceptionally that Lou left him in for the entire game; the boy led his team to victory and he was voted the outstanding player of the game.
When the game was finally over, Lou approached the boy and said, “Son, what got into you today?” And the boy replied, “You remember when my father would visit me here at school and we would spend a lot of time together, walking arm in arm around the campus? My father and I shared a secret that nobody around here knew anything about. You see, my father was blind—and today was the first time he ever saw me play!”
It is because of resurrection vision that we are able to “play above our heads” in the game of life and “see” the purposes and power and love of God.
Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant
A veteran missionary was returning home to the US after several terms on the field. Aboard a ship bound for New York harbor, a secularist challenged him by pointing out the futility of giving one’s life in missionary service. He continued by noting that no one on board ship was paying any attention to the veteran missionary, a sign they apparently considered his efforts quite wasted.
The servant of God responded, “I’m not home yet.”
The agnostic assumed the missionary was referring to a large crowd that would meet the ship, and he scoffed again when they disembarked—not a solitary person welcomed the missionary. Once again, the missionary said, “I’m not home yet.”
A lonely train ride lay ahead as he made his trek from New York City to his small Midwestern hometown. Reaching his destination, the missionary could no longer fight back the tears as the train pulled off. Again, he stood alone. It was then that the inner voice of God’s Spirit brought comfort by reminding the faithful servant, “You’re not home yet.”
Another Word
If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. –C. S. Lewis
Traveling Light
In the last century, an American tourist paid a visit to a renowned Polish rabbi, Hofetz Chaim. He was astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room filled with books, plus a table and a cot.
The tourist asked, “Rabbi, where is your furniture?” Hofetz Chaim replied, “Where is yours?”
The puzzled American asked, “Mine? But I’m only a visitor here. I’m only passing through.”
The rabbi replied, “So am I.”
Opening the Dawn
I feel within me that future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brighter. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens. . . . the nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse: history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these I have tried. But I feel I haven’t given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies with me. When I go to the grave, I can say, as others have said, “My day’s work is done.” But I cannot say, “My life is done.” My work will recommence the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight but opens upon the dawn. –Victor Hugo
The Rumor of Resurrection
At present, we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all of the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. –C. S. Lewis
Heaven and Hell by Choice
Arthur J. Schlesinger, Jr., reminisced about Edward F. Pritchard, Jr., politician, sometime crook, interesting character from Kentucky: “He had a diverting fancy about Judgment Day. When the last trumpet sounded, he would say, the Lord isn’t going to send people to heaven or hell. ‘He’s going to take away their inhibitions, and everybody’s going to go where he belongs.’”
Thinking Back
When Fred arrived at the Pearly Gates, there was hardly any line and he didn’t have to wait more than a minute before his interview. Naturally, he was a little nervous about getting through the gates and into the heavenly city. Very quickly, he found himself standing before an impressive angelic being with a clipboard who started getting his entry data down. After name, address, and a few other particulars, the angelic being said, “Fred, it would help the process if you could share with me some experience from your life on earth when you did a purely unselfish, kindly deed.” Well, Fred thought about it for a minute and then said, “Oh, yes. I think I have something you might be interested in. One day I was walking along and I came upon a little old lady who was being mercilessly beaten up by a huge motorcycle gang type of fellow. He was smacking her back and forth. Well, I just stepped right up and first I pushed over his motorcycle—just to distract his attention. And then I kicked him real hard in the shins and told the old lady to run for help. And then I hauled off and gave the guy a great shot right to the gut with my fist.”
The angel looked at Fred with a great deal of interest and said, “Wow, that’s quite a story. I’m very impressed. Could you tell me just when this happened?” Fred looked at his watch and said, “Oh, about two or three minutes ago.”
Home in Eternity
A prominent citizen in town was dying. As he lay in his lovely home, the best doctors surrounding him, he whispered, with a note of despair, “I’m leaving home, I’m leaving home.” Across town there lay a solitary figure in surroundings bare. Her modest home contained only the most threadbare of life’s essentials. In her eye was a gleam. Before she died, she was heard to say, “I’m going home, I’m going home.”
The Sure Sign
Early in my career as a doctor, I went to see a patient who was just coming out of anesthesia. Far off church chimes were sounding. The woman murmured, “I must be in heaven.” Then she saw me. She said, “No, I can’t be, there’s Dr. Campbell.”
Timing Is Everything
The pastor was speaking about heaven, about eternal bliss and the joys that are awaiting each person on “the other side.” He paused for effect and asked, “How many of you here want to go to heaven?” All hands were raised except for an eight-year-old boy sitting in the front pew. The minister asked, “Don’t you want to go to heaven, too, son?”
The boy replied, “Yes, but I thought you were making up a load to go right now.”
Those Greater Mounts
These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether, but that some day we may ride bareback, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the king’s stables. –C. S. Lewis
Thinking of the Next World
If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. –C. S. Lewis
Heaven and Earth
Heaven or heavenly in the New Testament bear little relation to the meanings we have so unscripturally attached to them. For us, heaven is an unearthly, humanly irrelevant condition in which bed-sheeted, paper-winged spirits sit on clouds and play tinkly music until their pipe-cleaner halos drop off from boredom. But in Scripture, it is a city with boys and girls playing in the streets; it is buildings put up by a Department of Public Works that uses amethysts for cinder blocks and pearls as big as the Ritz for gates; and indoors, it is a dinner party to end all dinner parties at the marriage supper of the Lamb. It is, in short, earth wedded, not earth jilted. It is the world as the irremovable apple of God’s eyes. –Robert Capon
Where Is Heaven?
What is heaven going to be like? Just as there is a mystery to hell, so there is a mystery to heaven. Yet I believe the Bible teaches that heaven is a literal place. Is it one of the stars? I don’t know. I can’t even speculate. The Bible doesn’t inform us. I believe that out there in space where there are one thousand million galaxies, each a hundred thousand light years or more in diameter, God can find some place to put us in heaven. I’m not worried about where it is. I know it is going to be where Jesus is. Christians don’t have to go around discouraged and despondent with their shoulders bent. Think of it—the joy, the peace, the sense of forgiveness that He gives you, and then heaven, too. –Billy Graham
Watch Your Aim
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, you will get neither. –C. S. Lewis
The Underwater God
In the Hebrides Islands, they have a lovely legend about a god who lived beneath the sea. And the great desire of this god who lived beneath the sea was to have a little baby boy—a human baby. So he was always trying to catch little babies that might be in boats passing along the surface of the sea from island to island. And so the people always clutched their children close when in their boats.
On one occasion, he almost got a boat. He was surging behind it, this sea-god, when the boat reached shore. And they lifted the little boy who was in it out onto the shore just as this god approached in a great wave. And they hurried away with the boy. At least they thought they’d gotten away except the sea-god managed to send just one little wavelet into the heart of that little child. And as that god, momentarily frustrated, settled back down to his palace beneath the waves, he was heard to say, “He will return to me for I have put a part of myself into his heart.”
Years later, the people of the village were astonished one day to see a strong, young man go down to the beach and get in a rowboat and begin to row out into the sea—but not toward another island. And they called out to him, “There is no island that way.” But on he rowed. And as they watched, when he had gotten a good distance, he stood up and dived into the sea to the god who had put a part of himself into that boy’s heart.
When we were made, God put a bit of Himself, a bit of eternity, a bit of the Kingdom of Heaven right inside of us and it cries out for Him. –Bruce Theileman
A Vision of Heaven
In recent years there have been a number of stories in the “Life After Life” vein. One of the most moving that I have read is the story that is told by singer Johnny Cash about the death of his brother, Jack, in 1944. Jack was two years older than Johnny and had always been his hero and model. On Saturday, May 12, 1944, Jack went to work at a workshop, cutting fence posts. Johnny had tried to talk Jack into going to a movie with him that day but funds were low and the family needed the money.
While at the workshop, Jack fell across the table saw and was badly injured. He was rushed to the hospital, but they didn’t expect him to live through the day. He lingered for a week, in and out of consciousness, sometimes hallucinating, then back into a coma. After a week of his condition worsening, it was obvious that he was going to die. The family gathered in the hospital room. Jack was swollen from the ravages of the traumatic injury. Johnny Cash tells the story:
“I remember standing in line to tell him good-bye. He was still unconscious. I bent over his bed and put my cheek against his and said, ‘Good-bye, Jack.’ That’s all I could get out.
“My mother and daddy were on their knees. At 6:30 AM he woke up. He opened his eyes and looked around and said, ‘Why is everybody crying over me? Mama, don’t cry over me. Did you see the river?’
“And she said, ‘No, I didn’t, son.’
“Well, I thought I was going toward the fire, but I’m headed in the other direction now, Mama. I was going down a river, and there was fire on one side and heaven on the other. I was crying, ‘God, I’m supposed to go to heaven. Don’t You remember? Don’t take me to the fire.’ All of a sudden I turned, and now, Mama, can you hear the angels singing?’
“She said, ‘No, son, I can’t hear it.’
“And he squeezed her hand and shook her arm, saying, ‘But, Mama, you’ve got to hear it.’ Tears started rolling off his cheeks and he said, ‘Mama, listen to the angels. I’m going there, Mama.’
“We listened with astonishment.
“’What a beautiful city,’ he said. ‘And the angels singing. Oh, Mama, I wish you could hear the angels singing.’ Those were his last words. And he died.
“The memory of Jack’s death, his vision of heaven, the effect his life had on the lives of others, and the image of Christ he projected have been more of an inspiration to me, I suppose, than anything else that has ever come to me through any man.” –Johnny Cash
A Scientific Report
Thomas Edison was a scientific genius and an exacting and practical man who didn’t casually say anything he didn’t believe. Mrs. Edison told about the night Edison was at death’s door. Suddenly, it was evident that he wanted to say something, so she and the doctor bent down close. This great scientist, with a smile on his face, said, “It is very beautiful over there!”