Do you ever think about heaven?
Recently the discouragements of life were getting me down, so I turned on some music that I had hoped would lift me up from my pit of despair.
All of a sudden a song by Matt Redman started to play, called One Day. One Day is a remake or modern take on the old hymn When We All Get to Heaven. Eliza Hewitt wrote this timeless hymn as a young woman, while bedridden with illness for an extended period of time.
I guess she too was in a pit … but rather than than play encouraging music, she wrote it.
That is what we all need to do when we feel surrounded on every side … write or proclaim what is true. It was in John 8:32, that Jesus himself said, “the truth will set you free”
For Eliza Hewitt, the truth was what she wrote from her sick bed. For myself it was in seeking truth, proclaimed by others.
Truth will never fail us. It can temporarily hurt, or make us uncomfortable, but it does not fail in giving us a freedom that lies (of others and of ourselves) can never thwart.
The hope of heaven is a freedom beyond anything that this Earth can provide. And sometimes that hope can propel our minds when this earthly journey gets hard, and we need to be reminded of what awaits us.
What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus
We’ll sing and shout the victory”