Articles
What Awaits Us
If you are familiar with the movie Apollo-13, a very accurate depiction of a historic space flight in April of 1970 where several problems almost forced the moon bound astronauts to be lost in space, you might remember one scene.
Just when the men are about to jettison the lunar lander that had been their lifeboat to get back close enough to earth to attempt a re-entry, Tom Hanks sits down in the control module and wipes the condensation off the window and looks down on the earth. You can just feel the longing in his heart to go home, to see his family, to return alive, but he knows the chances are slim. It's a real tense moment in the movie, and I believe in that moment, the only thing that mattered to him was going home to be reunited with his loved ones.
My comparison may be very poor, but do we have that kind of longing in our hearts toward Christ. Do we have that sincere yearning, where we are consumed with inexpressible desire to go home, to be with Him. Perhaps you are like me, and your answer is 'not as much or as often as I should!'
If we only understood the other side, what Heaven would be like, to be in the presence of God, face to face, I think it would be something we longed for every single day, with such intensity that it would consume us.
But we do know enough about what awaits us to make it the most important goal in our lives. We do know God will be there, and we will be in His Holy presence. Everything will be perfect. No more pain, no more worry, no concerns or problems, all will be joyous. We shall never shed another tear in sorrow. There will be no evil, no hate, no adversaries....but only love.
In the end of that movie, when the parachutes open and the men call on the radio that they are OK, as many times as I’ve seen it, I still get a cold chilling shudder and my eyes tear up. If that feeling is even 1 inkling of what we will experience when we hear that trumpet call and see Jesus coming for us, I look forward to that day with unmeasured anticipation.
