When Heaven Feels Like Home

When I was a kid, I didn't really want to go to Heaven, at least as it was described to me by Sunday school teachers and preachers.  

They said that it had streets of gold, and gleamed with priceless jewels and all manner of cleanliness and brightness.  I used to wonder if it would be the kind of place where I would walk around worried about breaking something, like when my mom went into a shop filled with glass vases and decorative figurines.  

"You break it, you bought it!' signs in these stores made me wonder if I was fit for Heaven.  

And then there was the notion that was perpetuated by the church-y folk in the Baptist churches I attended that eternity in Heaven was like one long worship service where angel choirs sang, and the redeemed stood round and sang with them. 

For a kid like me, these visions seemed more like Hades than Heaven. 

Church was something I endured, rather than enjoyed.  I would have resonated with the words of Mark Twain: 

“Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?”

Plus, I didn't really like most of the people in my church, and the thought of having to spend eternity with them didn't sound all that appealing.  They were grumpy and shushed me when I whispered with my friends in the pew next to me, and seemed to not have a lot of joy about much of anything outside of church, either.  

To be fair, I also had no desire to spend eternity doing laps in the Lake of Fire, so I lived with the existential dread that came with all the teachings of the afterlife I was given.  

It would take years of study, experience, and a complete change in my understanding of God before I came to the conclusion that a vision of Heaven that wasn't great for a kid isn't a vision worth having.  

The fact of the matter is, we can't map the geography of what comes after we "shuffle off this mortal coil," to draw some Shakespeare into this, which is never a bad idea.  Perhaps we dream, as the Bard wrote for his troubled Hamlet, and "what dreams may come," we do not know.  

I've come to believe that what comes next is an "undiscovered country," and is subject to a great deal of imagination, so why not imagine something wonderful?  

George R.R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones books, once wrote: 

“They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle-earth.”

I rather like that.  The world of Tolkien's Hobbiton from The Hobbit was a huge part of my childhood imagination, and the fact that it resembled my beloved English countryside drew it into my adulthood as well.  

I believe Heaven is just on the other side of our own reality, and that there are thin spaces in this world where we can catch glimpses of the next.  I've experienced enough of those thin spaces to feel this deeply in my heart, and I can't help but think that whatever Heaven might be, it includes the very best of this world, too.  

So now, when I think of Heaven, I no longer imagine cold marble, intimidating brightness, or an eternal church service with forced smiles and stiff collars. 

I imagine laughter echoing across green fields, meals shared without hurry, music that stirs the soul without demanding performance. I imagine a place where joy is effortless, where love is unfiltered, where every part of you is fully known and fully embraced. I imagine wholeness—not perfection, but restoration.

And I believe that God, the Creator of galaxies and gardens, oceans and imagination, is far more expansive and loving than any of the narrow visions of Heaven I once feared. 

If God is love—and I believe with my whole heart that God is—then the life to come must be the fulfillment of every deep longing we’ve ever had to belong, to be free, to be at peace.

So, if the images of Heaven you grew up with left you cold, or even afraid, you’re not alone. But don’t let those old ideas steal your hope. Trade them for something richer. 

Trade them for wonder. Let yourself dream again, with childlike awe and sacred imagination. Let yourself trust that whatever comes next will be more beautiful, more joyful, more healing than we could ever fully know.

Because at the heart of it all is God, and God is good. And I believe that when we finally cross into that “undiscovered country,” we will not feel out of place. We’ll feel like we’ve finally come home.

May it be so for all of us, and may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us, now and forever.  Amen.