“LOVING TO DEATH AND BEYOND”
I often have some really inadequate, illogical beliefs regarding Heaven. For example, just now I was wondering if I would still love my wife in Heaven. I felt God saying to my heart,
“Do you think, child, that you will love your wife less in Heaven than you do now? What a bizarre idea! You will be always in the presence of infinite love in Heaven. How could you love your sweetheart less there and then, than you do here and now?”
Now, I am aware that someone—George MacDonald perhaps—once had a couple in one of his books make a rather different assumption about marriage after death. Two skeletons, one dressed as a man and the other dressed like a woman, arrived before a gate in a carriage pulled by skeleton horses. I forget precisely how the dialog went, but it was something like this: The woman skeleton said, “Well, we appear to have gotten into the next world. But which one?”
The man skeleton replied, “It must be hell, because marriage is in it.”
In the case of some marriages, I tend to agree. Not every match is made in Heaven. Some are made in hell. And, I suppose, marriages are actually made in neither Heaven nor in hell. Rather, they are made (and unmade) on earth.
However, that is not the subject of this post. No matter where marriages are made, I wonder how long they can last. Fifty years? Sixty years? My parents’ marriage lasted sixty-five years to the day, when my dad died.
But do they last beyond the grave? When I stand at the grave at my wife, or she stands at my grave, will we have to say, “Goodbye forever,” or will we be able to say, “See ya later alligator!”?
Jesus is not altogether reassuring at this point. He said that there would be no marriage in Heaven (Matthew 22:30).
But does that mean that we will not still love in Heaven those we loved on earth? I don’t think that is what he meant. Certainly, marriage as a physical, sexual consummation will not be in play in Heaven. In context, Jesus’ response was to the Sadducees’’ “test case” of a woman who was married to seven different brothers, all of whom had preceded her in death. Thus, Jesus is probably primarily saying that relationships that are very physical here (some more than others!) will not be physical in Heaven.
However, be that all as it may be, my job right now, today, is to love my sweetheart the very best that I can. Speculation about Heaven is not what I am called to do. In any case, if Heaven is a place of perfect love, it might be a good idea for me to rehearse a bit here and now.
Recent Comments