Heaven – Hope Walking

Let Him In!

Jack was jogging through his local county park one grey afternoon when he felt an intense pain run down his left arm. Slowing his pace he turned down a wooded path that led back to his car. The light grew dimmer, and then, much to his surprise, the sun appeared and he noticed a wall on each side that he’d never seen before. At the end was a white gate, then a green garden filled with sunshine.

When Jack reached the gate a kind-faced woman opened it, smiled and said, “Welcome Jack. I’m Marie. They’re expecting you. Please sit over by the flowering tree and someone will be right with you.”

Then she walked about 30 yards, went through a door in a hedge, and was gone.

Jack knew he should be disturbed by these strange circumstances, yet he wasn’t. He felt uncommonly relaxed. He was wondering what tree produced such colorful and fragrant blossoms, and where his car had gone, when a young handsome man approached him.

“Welcome, Jack,” he said. “I’m Elias. I just want to ask you a few questions and your escort will take you to your room. Do you have any favorite colors?”

“Well, I really like yellows, bright blue and white. But why do you want to know?” asked Jack.

”We’re getting your place ready for you,” Elias said as he made notes in a file folder. “What view do you prefer: woods, fields, mountains, lake?”
“Lake, please,” said Jack. “But tell me, why am I here? Am I dead?”
“Not anymore,” Elias said.“You had a heart attack on the jogging path. When you walk through the door in the hedge you will enter unending life. There is just one thing you will do before you go to that door. It is our custom here to let the newest arrival greet the next arrival, as Marie greeted you. I’ll stay here with you until he arrives.”

Jack couldn’t tell how long they waited. It seemed to him that time was no longer important. He felt content and joyful like never before. He wanted to sit there forever. Then he heard steps approaching the gate. Elias took out another file and said, “This is Mike. Please open the gate and let him in.”

Jack happily walked toward the gate, but when he saw Mike, everything changed.

A volcano of fear, grief, hate and anger erupted inside Jack. He reheard the shouts, the shots, the explosive crash, saw the blood everywhere and felt the cold face of the friend he loved.

“No!” he cried. “No! I can’t let him in. Elias, don’t you know what he did?”

Elias’s eyes spoke understanding, but his voice was steady and low. “No, I don’t know.”

“Don’t you have his record?” insisted Jack incredulously.

“No, we don’t. All records were destroyed by our Lord.”

“There must be a record somewhere,” Jack insisted.

“Oh, yes, there is, but it’s not here. The Accuser has it. He saves everything.”

“The Accuser?”

“Yes, the Accuser. In Hebrew he’s called Satan.”

“Wait, you have some records. When I got here you knew my name and some of my history.”

“Oh, yes, of course we know some things, like when you started to follow the Lord. Let me see. Michael Sullivan. Born again April 18, 2021, McCreary Prison, Lexington, Kentucky.”

“You have prisoners here?!” Jack exclaimed.

“Oh, no! We don’t imprison anyone. That would be the other place. So, are you going to let him in?”

“Look, I don’t see why I am under any obligation to open the door for Mike. That would be like saying I forgive him for what he did to me.”

“Precisely”

“But I never agreed to that.”

“Oh, but you did. Thousands of times.”

“Thousands of times? When?”

“Did you ever pray the prayer the Lord taught his disciples?” Elias asked. “You call it the Lord’s Prayer.”

“Of course I’ve prayed it. Ever since I was a kid. We even used to pray it in school when I was little. What’s that got to do with this?”

After a pause, Elias continued, “Did you pray ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us?’”

After a long silence Jack admitted he had.

“Well, then,” Elias said. “Forgive Mike the way our Lord has forgiven you…totally.”

“But that’s impossible,” Jack wailed.

“God never asks us to do impossible things. Hard, but not impossible.”

“But, can’t I ask God to forgive me even if I can’t forgive Mike?”

“Let me ask you something, Jack. Do you remember the story of the prodigal son? Even when his father begged him, the older son refused to join the party.”

Jack quickly glanced at Mike, waiting to be let in, and nodded.

“Do you still have the letter?” Elias asked.

Jack knew what letter Elias meant, the letter from the Victim-offender Reconciliation Program at the prison.

“Look,” continued Elias. “the door to unending life is right over there. It’s called forgiveness. It’s not called, “I forgive” or “I’m forgiven” it’s simply called “forgiveness.” You either want to go there, or you don’t. As soon as you let Mike in you can go together.”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t. I’m not ready. I need more time.”

“You want more time, Jack?” Elias asked.

Jack nodded.

“Granted.”

Jack felt his body lift and fall. Glaring lights blinded him. He heard a “beep, beep, beep” over his head.

“He’s back,” exclaimed a woman in blue scrubs.

‘Oh, no!” thought Jack. “What have I done?”

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. Mark 11:25

A Crumby Prayer

What if there were prayer screeners in Heaven – maybe a panel of judges that rate your prayers from zero to ten before they are sent on to the Throne Room? How would you do? No doubt you have heard some eloquent, beautifully spoken prayers at churches, ceremonies, and formal events. Would you give them a “10”? Would Heaven?

What if you were at the end of your rope, or sick, or depressed, utterly exhausted and could hardly put three words together, would God listen to you?

One day such a woman harassed Jesus. Matthew calls her a Canaanite woman; Mark calls her a Syrophoenician woman; I call her a mom – a mom with an incurably sick little daughter. She hears Jesus is in town and she has no time to compose a winning plea for his help. She rushes to the house where Jesus is trying to remain unseen and starts yelling for Jesus.

“Have mercy on me, Lord,” she cries, “My daughter is horribly demon-possesed.”

Falling on the floor at his feet she begs, “Lord, help me!”

But there seems to be a problem. This mom is a Gentile and Jesus was sent to the children of Israel. He tells her it wouldn’t be right to take the bread from the children and give it to the pets. The children have to eat first.

Whenever you are tempted to give up praying, remember this woman!

“But,” she says.

“But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

What a crumby prayer! She admits she will settle for whatever bread will fall to the floor. Well, after all she is already down on the floor.

But much more than that, she knows who is making the bread.

When she started yelling for Jesus she called him “Son of David.” That’s the title of the heir to the royal throne, the Messiah, God’s anointed. These are no ordinary crumbs.

“Woman,” Jesus told her, “your faith is great! You may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

What bread do you need today?

In the prayer Jesus taught, we pray, “give us today our daily bread.”

We don’t need eloquence to ask God for what we need – we need confidence in who He is.

By all means, when you can, compose beautiful songs and prayers of praise to God. But when you can’t find words, that’s okay.

“Lord, help me” is enough.

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Scripture reference: Matthew 15:22, Mark 7:25

Father In Heaven

Where is Heaven?

You’ve probably prayed these words thousands of times, “Our Father who art in Heaven.” Where do you imagine Heaven is?

We throw the word heaven around a lot in our modern culture, naming ice cream, pizza parlors and ski resorts after it. Folks often say, “I was in heaven when ……” I doubt they mean anything close to what the followers of Jesus thought when he taught them to pray.

First century people had a simple understanding of heaven and earth. Earth was where they lived, walked, grew crops and buried their dead. Heaven was everything above earth, and who knew what all lived there? They easily perceived that powers and forces out of their control lived in the heavens. Thunder, lightening, hail storms and whirl winds, they thought, were the work of spirits, or gods, who had to be appeased or placated.

We have left behind the idea that Baal is hurling lightening at us, but the heavens are still very much mysterious to us. And somethings, like the recent polar vortex that froze all of Texas, remind us that we are not in control either.

Neither do we know very much about what is beyond earth. For the first time today NASA released a recording of wind on the planet Mars. Getting that sound recording was very impressive. But Mars is not far at all compared to what is out there. Take a look for yourselves on an imaginary trip through the heavens by clicking here.

If the heavens are of such magnitude that we cannot even imagine how big they are, did Jesus want us to imagine God is out there, somewhere, distant and unseen? Absolutely not!

If you were a Jew listening to Jesus teach you might have thought of God as the one who came down with thunder and lightening to give Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai. If you were a pagan listening to Jesus, you would have believed a multitude of gods and goddesses lived above the clouds, and, being afraid of them, you would have build altars and offered gifts to make them favor you. Either way you would not have been relaxed to be in the presence of Heaven.

And then Jesus spoke:

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven’

“I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

So, next time you look up at the sunny sky or peer out into the sparkling stars say this to yourself, “Wow! My Father made all that. And he’s bigger than all that. But he told me he knows me and cares about me. How awesome is that!”

Matthew 6:8-9, 25-26,7:7-11(ESV)