On our way to heaven
Dear Friends,
When did you last think of heaven? And do you think of heaven with confidence, hope and joyful expectation? I have just re-read Mark Ashton’s little booklet On my way to heaven, written in his last months before he died last year of cancer. There he writes, “The oncologist estimated I might have six to nine months to live … I said to the surgeon when he broke the news, that what he had just told me was, for the Christian believer, not bad news but good; it was not the end of the story, but the beginning.”
I have also just re-read CS Lewis’ book The Problem of Pain, in which the final chapter is headed ‘Heaven’. He explains that, “a book on suffering which says nothing of heaven, is leaving out almost the whole of one side of the account.”
Setting the hope of heaven alongside the pain of suffering is fundamentally Christian. The New Testament does it again and again. I have noticed how Paul does so in 2 Timothy. He points out to Timothy that it is “my gospel, for which I am suffering” and urges him to “join with me in suffering for the gospel”. Then, alongside that, he speaks of “the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus”, who has “brought life and immortality to light”, and affirms that “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness”.
Our hope of heaven is one of the most distinctively Christian things that we can hold out to those who are not yet Christians, and even to those who are. Are we on our way to heaven? Then we should be able to say, with Paul: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:17).
Chris Hobbs.
Vicar