Guilt and Heaven
It strikes me a bit odd that I have twinges of guilt when I think about heaven. Having lived 54 years, I’ve probably experienced most of the so-called pleasures that this world has to offer and I freely confess that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed many of them. Oddly though, they are not enough.
I spend way to much time thinking about how to increase my pleasure, comfort and enjoyment of life considering that at the stage my body is at, (though not my mind, yet) pleasure is likely to become less and less intense and less and less frequent. I find myself at this point thinking about heaven and actually preferring to be there.
I hope that you don’t send the kindly folks in the white coats to drag me away and lock me up. I’m not a danger to my self. I have no interest in suicide that is not what I am talking about. I’m simply beginning to realize that what I am looking for is not to be found on earth.
Maybe I’m just greedy or something, but I want more. I want things that last. I want things that don’t leave me with a feeling of frustration and sadness over the fact that this good thing was so fleeting. Whether it is a conversation with a friend, admiring the grace of a six-point buck bounding through the forest, watching two owls hunt in my pasture field at dusk, interacting with my family members, or worshipping with my church family, I’m struck that these things last from a minute to, perhaps on a good day, an hour or two and then it’s all over.
I don’t think God was just teasing us when He inspired David to write about the fact that at God’s right hand are pleasures forevermore. I think he was holding out the hope that when we get to the stage in life that I am at and we realize that we have probably experienced the most wonderful pleasures we’re ever going to experience and it’s all down hill from here, that there is hope.
We don’t have to give up; indeed we shouldn’t give up. But, somehow, it’s embarrassing to talk about it. In the circles that I travel in routinely, it is seems faithless, ungrateful, or maybe just weird for a “mature” person to talk about such things. There are a couple of reasons for this.
One is that for somebody, especially a Christian my age, to admit that he or she is still driven by the desire for pleasure and comfort is seen as unworthy. The truth is that few of us transcend that. I can tell by the way my friends talk about buffets, weekends away, concerts, cruises and all kinds of pleasurable activities. They sure look like they are driven by pleasure, though I don’t think many of them admit it, even to themselves.
The other is that to admit you are driven by pleasure and then to confess that anything that you’ve experienced thus far somehow is not enough and that you are really looking forward to heaven seems out of step with what we are conditioned to believe. The media and the marketplace are in cahoots, selling us the idea that that the right combination of things and sensations is really will satisfy us.
It seems churlish of me to admit it, but the pleasures of waking up beside my warm drowsy wife, going out to my barn and looking at my beautiful rotund pregnant goats, watching my elderly horse enjoy the fresh cold air and acting many years younger than he is, refreshing myself with a piece of fruit that traveled something like two thousand miles to get to my table for breakfast, getting into my comfortable car and driving to work where I spend the day doing meaningful tasks – many of them spiritually related, then coming home, spending an hour preparing a meal for my family, then sitting down and enjoying it with them, and following all this by spending the evening perhaps conversing with a friend, playing music, doing some odd jobs around the house, motivating my children to do their homework and things like that does not satisfy me.
These things make me long for more. They make me long for God. They make me long to be in His presence forever. I guess that would be heaven.
Ron Hughes
© January 2007
