Heaven

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” –C.S. Lewis

Last night I picked up a book I've been meaning to finish for probably over a year: The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God, by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge. I wouldn't say that the book changed my life per se, but there were a few things that stood out to me from what I read last night. The chapter was titled, "Coming Home," and was on the subject of hope and heaven. Here are a few excerpts that caught my attention:

"A story is only as good as its ending. Without a happy ending that draws us on in eager anticipation, our journey becomes a nightmare of endless struggle. Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?"

"If for all practical purposes we believe that this life is our best shot at happiness..., we will live as desperate, demanding, and eventually despairing men and women. We will place on this world a burden it was never intended to bear."

"Our images [of heaven] aren't much better. We speak so seldom of heaven and when we do, the images are sickly: fat babies fluttering around with tiny wings, bored saints lazing on shapeless clouds, strumming harps and wondering what's happening back on earth where the real action is.

“The fact that most Christians have a gut sense that earth is more exciting than heaven points to the deceptive powers of the enemy and our own failure of imagination.”

“Married people can be the loneliest on earth, not for some failure of the marriage, but because they have tasted the best there is of human relationships, and know it is not all it was meant to be.”

“The crisis of hope that afflicts the church today is a crisis of imagination. Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft writes:

Medieval imagery (which is almost totally biblical imagery) of light, jewels, stars candles, trumpets, and angels no longer fits our ranch-style, supermarket world. Pathetic modern substitutes of fluffy clouds, sexless cherubs, harps and metal halos (not halos of light) presided over by a stuffy divine Chairman of the Bored are a joke, not a glory, Even more modern, more up-to-date substitutes- Heaven as a comfortable feeling of peace and kindness, sweetness and light, and God as a vague grandfatherly benevolence, a senile philanthropist- are even more insipid. Our pictures of Heaven simply do not move us; they are not moving pictures. It is this aesthetic failure rather than intellectual or moral failures in our pictures of Heaven and of God that threatens faith most potently today. Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, and our love of Heaven…. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a dull lie or a dull truth. Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith, just as indifference, not hate, is the strongest enemy of love. (Everything You Wanted to Know About Heaven)”