Not Overrated
Legendary rock star David Cosby delivered many memorable hits, including the classic, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Part of the lyrics are: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die.”
January 19, 2023, was a time for him to die. Just one day prior, Crosby tweeted a message about heaven. He said, ”I heard the place is overrated….cloudy.”
His snarky comment was in response to another tweet -- a screenshot of a Google search for the phrase, "Can we go to heaven with tattoos?” According to the Twitter user, the top response reads, "People with tattoos will not go to heaven. People who drink alcohol will not go to heaven. People who eat too much pork will also not go to heaven. Short people will not go to heaven."
Certainly, David Crosby has since learned that heaven is not “overrated." He has learned that what St. Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians was true: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” He has learned that someone with tattoos or who drank alcohol or ate too much pork can go to heaven. And, yes, even short people.
Hopefully, in the time between his snarky tweet and his time to die the next day, his heart was made right with His Creator, so that he might now be personally experiencing the joys of Heaven. God alone knows.
“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9, NIV).
The Serious Business of Heaven
"Joy is the serious business of Heaven."
In this life joy is an extravagance. Like the upgrades that are offered when buying a car or a house, it is an extra feature, something that requires the resources to afford. But in Heaven joy comes as a standard feature and as such, it isn’t tacked on to life but is the thing to which life itself is attached.
Mitchell Dillon, founder of Illustration Exchange
The End Is Just The Beginning
To put this life in perspective we must set it beside the life to come. Lewis does that for us in the final paragraph of the Chronicles of Narnia. In the final scene, Aslan assures Peter, Edmund, and Lucy with these words:
“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream has ended; this is morning."
Lewis then brings the story to a final conclusion:
"And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."
The current life is not the best life we will ever live. As Lewis suggests, "every chapter" will be "better than the one before." This is not the longest life we will ever live. As Lewis also suggested, this life is merely the "title page" to eternity.
Nevertheless, this may will be the most important life we will ever live. For it is during this brief, adventure filled journey that so many decisions of eternal consequence are made. It is now, during this life, that we are presented with the choice to become followers of Christ. It is now, in this life, that free grace begins to be experienced.
The entrance way by which we enter the Kingdom of God is found on this side of eternity.
"You can enter God's Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way" (Matthew 7:13, NLT).