Category Archives: Heaven

Feeling the Sorry

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A visit to the dentist is never first choice of how to spend an afternoon, but once in a while we all end up there. Today was a good-news-bad-news dental day for me.

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My newest crown, just over a year old, has been sitting on a tooth that had been root-canaled less than 2 years before. Recently it had started to wiggle, so rather than take my usual irresponsible approach to the dental chair, I made a preventative appointment to investigate. (Normally I’d have waited for that sticky-food moment when the crown would have come off on its own.)

My new Michigan dentist, Dr. Matt, is a pro. He’s worked wonders for my various tooth challenges since I began seeing him a year ago and gets no blame for my wiggly crown. But after removing it today and studying the situation, he delivered his good-news-bad-news speech. Actually it was more like bad-bad-good-news.

Bad #1: the bit of tooth left under the crown was crumbling. Bad #2: the remaining root needed to be pulled a.s.a.p. The good news: I’d never miss it.

Dr. Matt was right about all that. As he went after the root, it came out in 6 pieces, a testimony to its precarious condition. And when it was all over an hour later, he tilted his head to one side, looked me in the eye and said, “I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

Lots of situations fall under the heading, “SORRY-IT-TURNED-OUT-THIS-WAY.” Parents say it to children, wives say it to husbands, husbands to wives, and friends to friends. And it’s interesting how hearing those words mitigates our disappointment or sadness, at least a little. Although Dr. Matt couldn’t prevent me from losing my molar, his “I’m sorry” (and the commiserating it implied) helped.

It’s been said that the two most powerful words in the English language are “I’m sorry.” But it’s intriguing that if we say those words to ourselves (as in, “I’m feeling sorry for myself”), the effect is just the opposite. It not only doesn’t help, it seems to coax us deeper into distress.

This afternoon while nursing a sore jaw, I thought of how God’s plan for the New Heaven and New Earth will not include the powerful words, “I’m sorry.” They’ll no longer have any power, because they won’t be needed; no one will do (or forget to do) anything necessitating them. Every motivation will be pure, and the genuine desire of each person will be to please someone else.

But what about the empathetic “I’m sorry’s” like I received today? They won’t be needed either, since nothing negative is going to happen to anyone in our new world. And thankfully, that includes tooth extractions.

Tooth

It all sounds heavenly.

“In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through…. So don’t feel sorry for yourselves.” (Hebrews 12:4-5)

Infinite Eternity

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Although math has never been my forte’, one “number” that’s always caught my fancy was the symbol for infinity: ∞

Symbol for Infinity

Maybe that’s because infinity isn’t like other numbers. It has an interesting story behind it because it isn’t anything specific but refers to an amount without limit. If something is “infinite,” one more can always be added, making the amount greater but the number, by definition, still infinity.

If one part is removed from infinity, the result is still infinity. I love that. Such crazy reasoning actually holds up in the precise world of mathematics, and there’s something captivating about that.

But does infinity have anything to do with eternity?

Eternity is something that exists outside of time and space, forever. As Christians, we’re looking forward to our eternity with God in heaven, a place that will exist out of time and space as we know them, though it will probably have its own new-fangled time and space.

As for God, he will exist there, too, but he also has existed throughout eternity past. And this is where eternity and infinity cross paths.

God existed as far back as history goes, whether that’s thousands of years or billions. Think big, and then add one more eon of time. He was alive an infinity before that. For him, the categories of past, present, and future are irrelevant. For us, it’s different.

Our past and present, though brief by the measurements of eternity, are monumentally important to us. The future, always uncertain, is cause for concern, because we wonder how it’s going to go. What will happen to us? How long will we live? What quality of life will we have? How will we die? And though Scripture describes our afterlife as worry-free, that doesn’t stop us from being concerned about our lack of knowledge about it.

Because our understanding is so limited, God offers to come close to help us. He says something like, “Although I exist outside of time and space, I also exist inside them. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to relate to you personally as I do, and that’s important to me. I always was and always will be, but I’m also in your here-and-now.”

Because of that, we can know God as our Father and Jesus as our brother, one-on-one, today, tomorrow, and every day after that. And as I’ve been thinking about how we can always add an infinite number of days to our relationship with him, such a wonder is now, and always will be, infinitely and eternally awesome.

“Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God.” (Psalm 90:2)

A Good Conversation

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Little Emerald, at 8 weeks, knows nothing of speech. She hasn’t even begun cooing, though she’s hinted it’s just around the corner. Nine month old Autumn, however, said her first word yesterday (“mama”).

The development of a child’s speech is a marvel. By the time she’s 2½, she can handle a back-and-forth with adults, the conversations minimal or maximal depending on the personality of the child.

My 5 oldest grandchildren (ages 4, 3, 2, 2, 2) can all hold their own with the rest of us. When they’re at home in Florida and England, it’s those conversations I miss the most. Once in a while I’ll get to have phone chit-chats with them, though those can’t compare with face-to-face, because poor connections sometimes muddle their words.

Often those conversations are dominated by my repeated question, “What did you say?” and of course every encounter has to end with a goodbye. After that, they’re all far away again.

Sometimes I fantasize about a certain conversation, an unusual one, that I’m going to have with Jesus Christ when I see him. Right now our communication tends to be one-sided, mostly mine, and although I know he hears me and speaks back through Scripture, our connection can’t compare to how it will be when we’re face-to-face. These days I’m sometimes confused and often ask him, “What did you say?”

But what will it feel like to look into the loving face of Jesus, to study his expression as he talks to me, and to hear him perfectly? I would imagine the inner satisfaction will be very deep, a sort of grand finale’ to years of longing. Being up close and personal with him will be a thrill unlike any I’ve known on earth.

But today I was wondering what our first face-to-face conversation might feel like to him. Is he looking forward to it, too?

I believe when Christians pass through physical death, waiting on the other side is an immediate connection with Jesus Christ, one-on-one. When it’s my turn and I arrive to him, maybe he’ll feel a sense of satisfaction in witnessing my awe over him, much like parents delight in watching a child receive something she’s always wanted.

Jesus might also take pleasure in knowing he has followed through, giving what he promised he would. Faith will have become sight for me, and he will have done what he said he was going to do. Watching me thoroughly “get that” might bring a blessing to him.

In any case, I’m eagerly anticipating that face-time, and when it happens, I sure hope I don’t mess it up by talking too much.

“So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:6,8)