Everlasting Ecstasy

Friend:  So what is all this business about babies in heaven?  It’s all you seem to want to talk about lately.

Mark:  Well, the pastors of my church have a daughter who lives in California.  She fell down a few weeks ago.  And as a result of that simple fall she lost a baby that was due to be born in two weeks and nearly lost her life as well.  So I find myself thinking about the baby in heaven and the family left behind on earth.

Friend:  That’s horrible.

Mark:  And that’s just the beginning.  I have a cousin who recently lost a grandchild who was about eight months old.  And the other day we got a prayer request asking us to pray for a young mother who had accidentally backed her car over her 18 month old child and killed her.  If you combine that with the car accident, it really got me thinking.  (If you haven’t heard about the car accident see the March 27, 2011 blog posting.)

Friend:  With the exception of your car accident, these are tragic events.  They are overwhelming.

Mark:  That’s the perfect word:  overwhelming.  Is there some way I can help make these kinds of life events less overwhelming for people?  If they happened to me, would my faith give me to tools to keep from being overwhelmed?  What kind of a strategy should a person use?  How could you fight back against the pain and sorrow?  Do I have to let this tsunami of depression roll over me or is there some kind of life preserver that will help me keep my head above water?

Friend:  Surely you’re not suggesting that there is a spiritual technique that can eliminate the pain and sorrow?

Mark:  No, I wouldn’t go that far.  Paul doesn’t say that the hope of heaven cancels out our grief, he says that it help us not to grieve in the same way as people do who do not have the Christian hope (I Thess. 4:13).  But he takes the concept of grief and connects it at the hip with the concept of hope.  We have the hope of heaven and that comforts us as we grieve.  But to actually experience this comfort requires some strategy.

Friend:  What kind of strategy?

Mark:  In Colossians 3:2 Paul tells us to “set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”  All of the mental pictures that will bring anguish and grief will be pictures of earthly things; the thought of not seeing the child take his first steps or hearing him say his first words.  Thoughts will come to you and you’ll see things like other people with their babies and you will definitely grieve, but you’ve got to give your mind someplace to go so that sharp edge of your grief can be dulled by the comfort of your hope.

Friend:  So you are suggesting that the mind should turn to pictures of heavenly things.  That’s seems a little vague to me.

Mark:  If I had just lost a child, I think that I would want to grab a hold of the most powerful concept I could and cling to it like it was a life preserver and I was being swept away in a tidal wave.

Friend:  So what picture would you cling too?

Mark:  I would lock on to the picture of my child experiencing everlasting ecstasy.  The concept of everlasting ecstasy is one of the most beautiful concepts I’ve ever encountered.  I would hold it tight and depend on it to keep me on the surface while the waves of sorrow washed over me.

Friend:  You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.  “Everlasting ecstasy” isn’t a Biblical term.  What do you mean?

Mark:  The love of God is the ultimate drug and it produces the ultimate high:  unspeakable joy.  All human attempts to enter into a state of altered consciousness through alcohol or other drugs are failed attempts to feed a heart hunger that only the love of God can fill.  A baby in heaven will never, ever know this heart hunger.  He will never know sorrow, or fear, or pain.  He will be able to enter into the presence of God directly and live in a state of perpetual ecstasy.

Friend:  Okay, I get that, I think.  But how can you make a picture of that?  I’m getting a picture of a little kid with a tie dyed tee shirt sitting in front of the throne of God with glazed eyes and muttering, “Far out, dude!  This is just so groovy!” 

Mark:  Okay.  We’ve established that you are a child of the 60’s.  Your picture needs some work.  Our best bet in painting this picture is to look at some of the life experiences that people have had on earth that give us a foretaste of heaven.  The following experience is from Charles Finney’s autobiography.  It happened shortly after his conversion.

“The Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God … No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love.”  

I could tell you twenty stories very much like that of experiences people have had of the love of God.  These experiences are rare on earth but they are the constant experience of people in heaven.

Friend:  Okay, I get what you mean.  But it’s pretty hard to make that into a picture.  What are we supposed to imagine?  At least my picture had the baby in a tie dyed shirt with a happy expression on its face.

Mark:  Okay.  Moment of total honesty, Mr. Child-Of-The-Sixty’s.  In your mental picture of the baby in heaven, was the baby smoking something?

Friend:  Ah, no comment.

Mark:  As I said, you mental picture needs work.  But it does grasp the basic concept.  We are talking about living in an altered consciousness.  To put it another way, in heaven we stop experiencing the emotional norms of life on earth and we enter into God’s own emotion experience.  God lives in a state of everlasting ecstasy.  The Father continuously feels the love of the Spirit and of the Son and this love produces inexpressible joy.  People in heaven live in that emotional environment.

Friend:  Do you have chapter and verse for that?

Mark:  “Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; abide in my love.”  “These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy made be made full.”  (John 15:9, 11 NASB)  God is saying, “Abide, or live in the experience of My love.  Feel My divine joy.  Experience what I feel.”

Friend:  Okay, but how do you make a picture out of that?

Mark:  Two steps.  First, write down what Finney experienced on a card.  Read it over again.  And then put that together with the picture.

Friend:  But what picture?

Mark:  Haven’t you guessed?  He always had time for babies.  Even when He was insanely busy, with enormous demands on His time, if people brought Him babies or little children He would make time and take them in His arms and bless them.  I can just picture His smile as He held them.  So picture your baby/child in the arms of Jesus.  Picture the smile on His face.  And the reread what Finney experienced so you will know what your baby is feeling as he’s held in the arms of Jesus.