A Place Prepared

The songs of faith we sing from Sunday to Sunday take us in many different directions.  Some are challenging like "Rise Up, O Men of God."  Some are comforting like, "What a Friend we Have in Jesus."   Some take us into the throes of our earthly struggles and some send us soaring into the glories of heaven.  When I was growing up and learning all those songs, one I remember singing many times was "When We All Get to Heaven."  It was a song about heaven,  a song about our hope of heaven.  It was written way back in 1898.  I sang it as a young boy whose father had died.  I sang it knowing in my inner being that though he was no longer on this earth, he surely was in heaven.

 

Maybe you grew up with the song as well and if you did, your remember how it goes.  "Sing the wondrous love of Jesus, sing His mercy and His grace; in the mansions bright and blessed, He'll prepare for us a place. (Chorus) "When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be!When we all see Jesus, we'll sing and shout the victory."  Some talk about heaven as a place filled with streets of gold and personal mansions.  Others speak of it as if it will be like "old home week," or a high school reunion after fifty years.  Some speak of family members who have gone on before greeting those who come later. 

I never have been really comfortable with all these images of eternity that are so dependent on the finite earthly things for which we long.  It has always seemed to this sojourner that heaven must be about more than we can image or comprehend.  I do not profess to understand how it can be, nor am I artist enough to paint a picture.  What I do know is that it is a place prepared by Jesus for my father.  Such was enough for a mere boy and the more I live the more it speaks of the eternal reality we call heaven.