Is God really all we need?
Blog by Emma McCoy | 6 minute read
You can listen to this blog read aloud by Emma here:
About this time last year, I was in a car with two friends when the idea of heaven was brought up. “Honestly, I don’t even want to go to heaven,” one of them said. The other agreed, saying it was much too boring. The general consensus was that heaven was going to be for eternity, somewhere far away from earth, and it was going to be dull. Earth was where everything exciting happened, even if it was hard sometimes, so who in their right mind would want to actually go to heaven?
I wanted to tell my friends how wrong they were, but I didn’t have the right words. By the time I worked up my courage, the conversation had changed and I was left to mull it over in that wonderful space known as hindsight.
Two weeks ago, we talked about how heaven is God fully revealed to us and fully known by us. And how Earth, while interesting, can really be awful sometimes. Thankfully, heaven can be experienced in places right here, right now; like in church, when we love someone, when we feel truly seen and known, and when we’re forgiven even when we don’t deserve it.
Based on these lovely slices of heaven, I can’t help but believe that heaven is going to be a really interesting and all-consuming place. Faced with joys like these, I can’t help but believe that Jesus is someone worth having hope in. And our question two weeks ago, “Tell me about your hope in Jesus from a non-Christian perspective,” would have been super helpful in my discussion with my friends if I had only thought to frame it that way.
But people can be skeptical (hindsight is critical that way), so I’m not sure if I would have articulated my point well enough to convince my friends that heaven, and Jesus, are things worth having hope in. If I had a do-over, I would have pointed my friends to Psalm 23, which is a vivid picture of an immediate heaven, not one that is distant and boring. “He brings me to rest in green meadows.” I mean, who doesn’t want to go lay in a field and not have to worry about anything? “He brings me to my senses.” I’d say that being fully present, not in denial about anything, and completely aware is a state of ecstasy, not apathy.
On Sunday, we’re going to take three lines from Psalm 23 and talk about how our love has changed because of Jesus.
When I’m at college, I try to eat lunch with a friend at least once a week. On the outside, we look pretty dang similar. We’re both literature majors, both dorky, and both look like we drive a Subaru and have just come from a hike. But every time we talk about God, we could not have more differing opinions. He is firmly agnostic, while I believe in a caring and involved God. And it brings me hope to know that we can still talk, still disagree, and still make mistakes together.
Nothing makes my skin crawl quite like a good “But this is my truth!” I mean, like, what? I’ll admit, when Jesus directs me when I am feeling particularly not-directional, it isn’t fun. I want to go somewhere, he says no, and much like a child with their toy taken away, I throw a fit. Well, sometimes I just sulk. But as hard as it is to give up control (particularly in a culture where autonomy is the highest good) I take a downright unnatural kind of comfort in knowing that it’s not all about me. I don’t actually get to determine what truth is. Or right or wrong. Or what heaven is going to be like (because, thankfully, I wasn’t consulted). And that rubs against a culture that says “I’m just going to do this my way” or “You do you” or “I’m just speaking my truth.” I have hope that Jesus is protecting me and directing me according to His plan, because on my own I’d be bound to direct myself right into someone else’s truth.
When I think about death in a valley, I picture a place that’s impossible to get out of. Trapped. All exits blocked. Nowhere to run. But in Psalm 23, Jesus is still protecting and directing us. And when he directs us to a place that feels claustrophobic, or terrifying, or goes against all rational ideas of safety, we want to dig in our heels and abandon ship. But the way sometimes goes through death’s dark valley, and even then we can know that there is a way out.
Having hope in Jesus changes the way we think about love, the way we experience love, and the way we love others. It helps us experience heaven in bits and pieces, right here on earth. Though I think that the conversation I had with my friends has been long forgotten by them, I still hope it’ll come up again one day. At that point, I might be articulate enough to point them toward Psalm 23 for a vision of heaven that is immediate, interesting, and hopeful. And maybe that hope for heaven, rather than dread, can change the way they love as well.
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