Beloved friend,
I want to write to you, this morning, about heaven. Not as a doctrine. Not as a debate. As a country. As a place that is real — more real than the chair you are sitting in, more real than the news you read this morning, more real than the most painful thing you are carrying right now. There is a country you have never seen, and it has been waiting for you since before you were born.
You will probably not have time to think about it today. The to-do list is long. The bills do not pay themselves. The phone is going to ring with something. But before the day takes you over, sit a moment with me, and let me read you a few sentences from the One who has been there.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
I want you to read that slowly. Not as a verse you have heard before. As a description of an actual place.
Every tear
The Greek word for "wipe" is a tender one. It is the word a mother uses with the corner of her apron when her child has been crying. It implies kindness. It implies closeness. The Lord Himself does this. Not an angel. Not a deputy. Not somebody five rows back. The same hands that were nailed to a Roman cross are the hands that, when you walk into that country, will find your face.
And the tear they will wipe is not just the tears of that day. It is the tears of all your days. The tear from the night your mother died, the tear you are still carrying. The tear from the breakup that should not have happened. The tear from the doctor's office. The tear from the funeral where you held it together for everyone else and could not, when you got to the car, hold it together for yourself. The tear from the Saturday morning you sat alone with a cup of coffee and realized your life had not gone the way you thought it would.
Every one of them. Counted. Remembered. And wiped.
Death shall be no more
This is the part of the verse I find I cannot quite take in. Death has been so woven into our existence that we do not even notice it anymore. Every funeral we have attended. Every pet we have buried. Every face we will not see again on this side of the curtain. The whole rhythm of human life is paced by death. We measure our years by who is no longer at the table.
And then, one morning — soon, beloved — there will be a country where it is not. The breakfast table will be full of every face you have lost in the Lord. Full. Not partial. Not symbolic. Full. The body that gave out on you. The body of the one you have not stopped grieving. The body of the saint you read about as a child and longed to meet. All there. All restored. All made new.
The grave that swallowed so much will be turned upside down and made to give it all back. Death shall be no more.
Mourning, crying, and pain
Notice the order. Mourning is the deepest. Crying is the visible. Pain is the constant. The Lord names all three because He has touched all three. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus — that was mourning. He cried in the garden of Gethsemane — that was crying. He bore in His body our diseases on the cross — that was pain.
And He did not bear them so they would have the last word. He bore them so they would not. The country He has prepared has no room for any of the three. The former things have passed away.
I cannot quite imagine it. A morning where I do not wake to a low ache somewhere. A morning where I do not have to brace myself for the news. A morning where the people I love are not somewhere across the country, or across a marriage, or across the grave. A morning where the Lord is the first face I see, and the first sound is His voice, and the day stretches forward without end.
But it is real. Realer than this room.
What kind of place
The Bible is restrained about heaven. It does not give us a tour. It gives us, in Revelation 21 and 22, a few snapshots — and the snapshots are deliberately glorious in a way that hints at what we cannot yet contain.
A city, descending. Streets like gold. Gates of pearl. A river of life flowing from the throne. A tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. No temple, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. No sun, because the glory of God is its light. No night. No locked doors. The kings of the earth bringing in their glory.
And running through it all, like a low note under a hymn, the simplest sentence in the entire book of Revelation:
Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. Revelation 21:3
That is the heart of it. Not the gold. Not the pearl. Not the absence of suffering. The presence of the Lord. The thing Eden had and Eden lost. The thing Moses asked for and got only a glimpse of. The thing the high priests went into the temple to approach, once a year, with trembling. The thing Christ came to restore. God Himself, with His people, with no veil and no leaving.
For today
I do not write this, dear one, to make you long for the next world in a way that makes you useless in this one. The Lord still has work for you here. There are still neighbors to love and grandchildren to teach and small kindnesses to do that nobody but Him will see. The fact of heaven does not make today disposable. It makes today weighty. Every act of love you do here is a brick in the city you are heading toward.
But I do write to remind you — when the headlines are heavy, when the body aches, when the people you love are far, when the year has been longer than you wanted it to be — that this is not the country you were made for. The longing in you that nothing here has satisfied is not a flaw in you. It is a homing signal.
You were made for that other country. The Lord has been making it for you for two thousand years. He is, even now, putting some final touch on something He intends to delight you with the moment you arrive. The journey has been hard. The arrival is going to be wonderful.
Lift up your head, beloved. Home is closer than it was last year. The Door is the same Door it has always been. His name is Jesus.
I will see you there.
In His Hands,
Rev. George H. Stoddard