“You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
Psalm 16:11
Will heaven’s ecstasy go on forever? Is it true we will never become bored? Will it really be as glorious as the Bible insists? God sprinkles hints of heaven on earth to give us an inkling — just a small glimpse — of how pleasurable heaven will be. I catch hints of heaven in magnificent sunsets that leave me breathless. I hear it in the haunting strains of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. I recognize it in the soft gaze of someone I love. I smell it in the ocean air when dark, gray clouds brew in the distance. If these are mere glimpses and hints of heaven, what will the real thing be like?
C. S. Lewis wrote, “The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when he made the worlds, are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us [in heaven]. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. In the light of our depraved appetites we cannot imagine this.”*
Every beautiful sunset, breathtaking symphony, or exhilarating taste of salt air at the ocean is not merely for your present inspiration. It is a God-sent gift to whet your appetite for your true home in heaven. Earthly pleasures never quite satisfy; God wants you to sing “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passin’ through.” In heaven we will keep getting smarter, wiser, younger, and happier. The unfolding of the story of redemption will have us taking one gasp after another, with our joy and amazement ever increasing.
Oh God, open my eyes and heart that I might recognize “heaven” here on earth!
