heavenly duties



            I routinely see memes on Facebook about loved ones that have passed away watching over us from heaven. While I admit, it is a heartwarming thought, I do wonder if they do truly watch over us? Certainly, the viewpoint is such that they could but there must be other things to do in heaven than watch what is going on here on earth. We are often searching for our purpose here on earth which leads to the question; what is one’s purpose in heaven?  There must be purpose, right?  All I have ever heard is that we will praise God in heaven. Don’t get me wrong, I believe heaven will be beyond our imagination of fabulous. Perhaps that is why we don’t know much beyond praising him because we cannot conceive the vision.
            I have no conclusion to draw on this topic. It does comfort me to think that Don might be watching over me. I want to believe that he knows all that is going on in our family life and that when I sense him close by it is more than my imagination. I do believe that God allows those events for my comfort. It might be a song, a phrase or a memory that brings a smile to lips. However, I don’t think that God wants any of us to dwell on the past, each day we are a new creation in Christ with new things to do and lives to touch. We take what we learn from our previous days to make us more wise as we move forward.
            I don’t know how we will pass time in eternity but I have every confidence that it will be beautiful beyond anything of beauty here on earth. Perfection as we have never known before.
I do know that our prayers reach heaven and they are answered.
            James 3:17 “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”
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  1. harleyAugust 13, 2015 at 9:50 AM

    After my father died on 2/25/2012, I felt inspired and did way more soul searching than I did in the previous 49.6 years. A Baptist Minister by the name of Don Piper was in a car accident on 1/18/1989 during a ride home from a Church Convention and from that experience he wrote a book called: "90 Minutes in Heaven" released in 2004. His experience was basically meeting familiar faces of family and friends. The narrative conveys an excited feeling describing colors as more vivid and sounds coming through crisp and clear without any distortion. At the accident scene a prayer and a song from a fellow church mate, Dick Onerecker, helped bring him back. Also about 3 days prior to his plane crash in Monona Bay, Madison, Wisconsin on 12/10/1967, Otis Redding wrote: "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay". It has been theorized that strongly entrenched images of heaven as a place of rest helped propel this song to its well deserved place at #1 for 4 weeks after its release. So he started a song that a human friend helped finished after his death. What if he started another song sometime after his death and inspired someone to write the lyrics and perhaps someone else to put the black dots to give it melody and harmony. Singer Paul Simon may have alluded to this in Sound of Silence where he says: "people writing songs that voices never share and no one dared disturb the sound of silence."

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