I Can Only Imagine

Easter’s over, but no series on mortality would be complete without a few words about Heaven.

Our planet recently lost two prominent citizens. Reverend Billy Graham died on February 21, and renowned physicist Stephen Hawking on March 14. How could two such brilliant minds have held such opposing views on the afterlife? Compare these statements:

Hawking: “We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is: there is no God. No one created our universe, and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

Graham: “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”

Was one of these men completely wrong, or is the truth somewhere in the middle? How can we know? It’s been one of the top questions of humankind since our beginning. It’s the reason people are drawn to mediums who claim they communicate with the spirits of the departed. It’s what makes songs like Mercy Me's I Can Only Imagine and the movie behind it so popular. It’s why we’re so fascinated by those who’ve had near-death experiences (NDEs). We want to know. We want assurance that something better awaits us, or at least nothing far worse.

Books about people who’ve had NDEs abound, and their stories share too much in common for us to dismiss. One of the most powerful I’ve read is by Dr. Eben Alexander, a highly trained neurosurgeon who firmly believed NDEs are fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress—until he experienced one himself. For seven days, Alexander lay in a coma with the part of his brain that controls all thought and emotion shut down completely. His recovery is a medical miracle, but the real miracle lies in the journey he took during that time, through a sphere where neither time nor place mean anything.

Before he underwent his journey, Dr. Alexander could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today, he is a doctor who believes true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real, and death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition. In his book, Proof of Heaven, he tells the story of meeting and speaking with the Divine source of the universe itself. He says it is the hardest story to tell, because our limited language has no words for what he experienced.

Delta Beach, not Heaven. Not even close.

This falls in line with the words of Jesus’ disciple, John, who received a glimpse into Heaven and recorded everything in the book of Revelation. The book is difficult to understand because it was difficult to write. We have no words.

My favorite promise of John’s, though, is from Revelation 21:4-8: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away…”

There’s more, and I hope you’ll look it up for yourself. It’s why we sing with great gusto one of my favorite songs, Come as You Are by Crowder. The best line? “Earth has no sorrow that Heaven can’t heal.”

We can only imagine.

Everybody's Doing It

Right around the time the mayor challenged me to write about mortality, a couple of other related things happened. A Facebook friend accused me of wishing my life away because I wanted January to end. And my mother lamented, “what is it with all the deaths lately?”

I was beginning to get the message.

To the mayor, I said, “Well, we’re all dying. I suppose mortality is a relative topic for a blog post.”

To the Facebook friend, I admitted that in many ways I do wish my life away. That’s because I believe something C.S. Lewis said: “There are far, far better things ahead than anything we leave behind.” Anything! I wouldn’t mind one bit if God chose to call me home today, but I’ll trust his timing.

With my mother, I held my tongue. But last time I checked, the odds of dying are a hundred percent. I may be lousy at math, but I do grasp the concept of a hundred percent.

Everybody’s doing it, but hardly anyone’s talking about it—even when it’s imminent. Why is that?

With Easter approaching, I think it’s a great time for us to consider this matter of death and the hereafter. In fact, I think we can talk about this for at least four weeks. You can tune out or tune in, it’s your call. Either way, your turn to die is coming. The only piece we don’t know is when or how.

I know some people believe that once we die, that’s it. We cease to exist. They could be right, but if so, there’s nothing more to say. 

So I’m going to plunge forward with this series on the premise of my own belief, based on the Bible. It’s summed up fairly economically for us in Hebrews 9:27-28: “Everyone has to die once, then face the consequences. Christ’s death was also a one-time event, but it was a sacrifice that took care of sins forever. And so, when he next appears, the outcome for those eager to greet him is, precisely, salvation.”

So, with that out of the way, I hope you’ll keep reading.

“Every man dies, not every man really lives.”

If you’ve seen the movie Braveheart about William Wallace, Scotland’s martyr to freedom, you are familiar with the quote above. If you knew you were going to die tonight, could you honestly say you have really lived? I hope so. It’s not a matter of longevity. I’ve known people who have packed far more life into thirty years than some do into ninety—and I don’t mean bungee jumping or globetrotting or sampling every delicacy known to man. I’m talking about making an impact, leaving a legacy. Using whatever time you have to invest in the purposeful work God placed you on this planet to do. Bringing his kingdom to the people around you, using whatever talents and passions he’s given.

If you can’t say you’ve really lived, what would need to happen for you to be able to say you have? I sure hope it’s not some superficial bucket list, some tourist trap you’ve always wanted to visit, a golf course you’ve hoped to play, or a mindless feat of daring you haven’t quite worked up the courage for. I hope it would require a bit of self sacrifice. That’s where life is found. (Check out Matthew 16:25).

Something to think about until we continue next week.