The Answer to Michael’s Question

“TO DEPART AND BE WITH CHRIST…IS FAR BETTER.” PHILIPPIANS 1:23 NKJV

Things we’ve never experienced before tend to frighten us. A little boy wrote a letter to God, addressed it to heaven and mailed it. Letters like that usually end up in the dead letter office, but somehow this one was opened. It read, “Dear God, what’s it like to die? I don’t want to do it, I just want to know. Your friend, Michael.” It’s a question we’ve all pondered.

Harold Sala writes: “When I’m going to a part of the world I’ve never been to, I read and investigate to find out what it’s like. I browse travel books, go on the Internet, talk with someone who can tell me what it’s like from personal experience. No other book in the world can tell me what the Bible tells me about heaven. The only person who has been there and can tell me what it’s like is Jesus.” Knowing that for the believer, death is just a transition into God’s presence, Paul writes: “When our…body wears out…we have…an eternal house in heaven” (See 2 Co 5:1).

At the end of his book The Last Battle, the characters die in a train accident, and C.S. Lewis concludes the story like this: “The things that [happened] after that were so beautiful I cannot write them. For us this is the end of all the stories, but for them it was only the beginning of the real story.” Speaking about heaven Paul says: “If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose…The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better” (TM).

And that’s the real answer to Michael’s question!