It can be uncomfortable talking about heaven with some people because of their rather condescending attitude towards life after death.
“So, if you say the right words when you die you get to go to the big amusement park in the sky and ride the roller coaster forever!”
“If there aren’t cigars and whiskey in heaven, I don’t want to be there.”
“Are you saying everybody is going to play harps, sit on clouds and be nice to each other all the time? Come on. Get real!”
Even Christians sometimes wonder, “Is heaven too good to be true?”
But wait a minute. Maybe the problem is we’re so jaded by our self-centered, me first life and culture that we sell God short. Let’s be honest, if God is more than a souped up Avenger, he’s in a league of his own. He is all powerful. He is perfectly good. He can do what we would never imagine. And that is exactly the kind of God we both need and want. We don’t want some hybrid Hercules type who is pretty much like ourselves!
Now if God is so great, so good and so powerful, and then he tells us he’s got a really great place for us, do you think you’re going to find drug dealers there? Will you expect serial killers, power hungry dictators or even typical husbands and wives viciously attacking each other over dinner because of something one of them said three years earlier? Do you think people in God’s heaven will be bored, hopeless and depressed? That doesn’t seem to fit!
When talking about heaven God could have just said, “All I’m going to say is that this place I’ve got for you is really cool.” That would have been enough. But to whet our appetite for eternity he described cities with streets of gold and buildings with gem-studded walls to get us out of our narrow-minded ideas that this life is the end all and eternal life is just an afterthought.
If you’ve ever wondered about life after death and whether it’s all that important, join us for one of our weekend services. It might give you a new appreciation for the phrase, “The best is yet to come.”
Saturday evening worship: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am
Hawaii Lutheran Church (WELS)
- Community Lutheran Church
- Honolulu, HI
- Community Lutheran Church holds protestant chapel services in Honolulu, Hawaii near Pearl Harbor, HI. We are next to the USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hickam Air Force Base, and Fort Shafter Hawaii. Look for us directly behind the Salt Lake, Hawaii, Target.