Imagine

Contributed by:
Eric Dunaway
small groups pastor

Last summer I was given the opportunity to lead a team of eight people from PCC on a missions trip to northern Serbia. Everything about the experience was amazing...right up until the morning we arrived at the airport to begin our journey home and discovered that our flight out of Belgrade had been canceled.

What followed after that was a hellish nightmare of standing in line for hours, coordinating flights back to the U.S., and trying to keep our team together as much as possible. To make a long and pitiful story short, six of us ended up in Paris and, of course, missed our connecting flight to Detroit. At that point, we were feeling pretty dismal, and my mind began to wander on what the rest of the journey would entail for us. Would we make it out of Paris that same day? Would we stay together on the returning flights? At that point I would have settled for a seat next to a chicken coupe on a cargo plane (think Indiana Jones) if it meant returning safely to the U.S..

When we finally arrived at the Lufthansa counter, things started looking up. We learned that we were all on a flight to D.C., and that we'd been bumped to "Business Class." None of us had any idea what that meant...but we knew it was an upgrade. We hoped it meant roomier seats, more leg room, and maybe an extra snack, or two. What we discovered, however, is that "Business Class" is basically first class. Not only did we have bigger seats with more leg room, but we also had seats that fully reclined to a horizontal position. Not only did we have in-flight movies, but each one of us had our own screen with a long list of on-demand titles that were free to watch. Not only did we have a meal, but we had a five-course meal of French cuisine-I had the orange duck. Food and drinks were all complimentary, and we could have as much as we wanted. They even gave us a little convenience bag that included an eye mask, socks, and toiletries, among other things.

Needless to say, our expectations were far exceeded...it was even better than any of us had imagined.

This past weekend, we continued our series on Heaven or Hell, and Ron gave a message titled Is Heaven for Real? His big idea in that message was that we can only hope for what we can imagine. Many of us probably have preconceived ideas of what Heaven will be like. Lounging on clouds, walking streets of gold, eating chocolate all day...some of these may be the images that come to mind. Our human imaginations, however, tend to be influenced by what we've read, heard from others, or even seen in movies.

But my guess is that Heaven will be far better than we can ever imagine.

Is Heaven for real? I believe it is. I believe it will be a joy and a wonder far greater than we could ever imagine. I also believe that we don't wait until we die to experience it...Heaven starts here and now.

For deeper consideration, you may want to check out the following resources that have been a big inspiration for our series:

Heaven Is For Real by Todd Burpo
90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper
Heaven by Randy Alcorn