Hi, I’m Joni, and although it happened years ago, it’s a treasured memory.
It was back when I was still new to living in a wheelchair. I was only 19 years old, fresh out of the hospital, and I was feeling pretty depressed and discouraged, but I had agreed to do a one-on-one Bible study with my neighbor friend, Steve Estes. So every Thursday evening Steve came over to my parent’s house — he brought the RC Colas, and I promised that my mother would supply plenty of BLT sandwiches. On this particular Thursday night, he wanted to help me examine what the Bible had to say about heaven. And oh, I remember it so clearly: there he was sitting by the fireplace, with his open Bible, and began reading and explaining a variety of verses about the after-life. One passage he really focused on was 1 Corinthians chapter 15.That’s the chapter that describes what sort of body we will have in heaven—and as he listed through the verses, my heart seemed to burn as bright as the coals in the fireplace as I (right then) caught just a small glimpse of what it might mean to have a glorified heart, a glorified mind, and a glorified body.
Oh my goodness, I'm going to have a new body (I remember saying aloud)! For me, sitting paralyzed in a wheelchair, that was such good news. It hit me like a ton of bricks — I discovered that God never intended for my paralysis to be permanent. Oh, sure, maybe on this side of eternity it is, but I Corinthians 15 painted a much more hopeful picture. And I guess that's what filled my heart that night — a bright and happy hope of heaven — a bright and happy hope of better, better things to come. My wheelchair would not last forever, and that was such a wonderful thought. I got so excited, I started laughing. And you can imagine how that touched my friend Steve — he thought he was just giving me a simple lesson from first Corinthians 15, but for me, it was so much more than that.
Well, my friend Steve closed his Bible and he started laughing, too. In fact our joy was so great, he got up, pushed me in my wheelchair outside of the front lawn (it was late at night) — and together we sang and we howled at the moon, "Oooh-oooh-oooh!" He kept pushing my wheelchair around in big circles and we kept whooping and hollering. And you know what? Minus the howling at the moon, I am sure heaven will be much like that. It’ll be a place where we’ll do things with our friends for the sheer joy of being together and blessed by God. Heavenly fellowship with our Christian friends will not be some ethereal do-nothing-ness. As Steve told me that night, because heaven is the home of redeemed humans, it will be thoroughly “human” in all of its structure and activities. Steve showed me a quote by Dr. Hodge, a theologian, who wrote (and listen to this, this is really great):
Heaven’s joys and conditions must all be rational, moral, emotional, voluntary, and active. There must be the exercise of all the human faculties, the gratification of all tastes, the expression of all talents, the realization of all ideals, the aesthetic instincts, the holy affections, the social affinities, and the inexhaustible resources of strength and power native to the human soul, all these must all find in heaven their exercise and satisfaction.
That’s a mouthful there, but basically, it’s saying Heaven is not a place for spirit-spacey beings; no, it’s a place for humans. And because Jesus is even now in heaven in His incarnate and glorified body, we will join Him in all these delights and so much more. And you know what? It’s a promise! That promise and many more are all listed in a beautiful 14-page pamphlet called Bible Promises for Hope and Courage, and I would like to send you a copy. So after we’re done here, please go over to my radio page at joniandfriends.org and ask for your free copy.
© Joni and Friends, 2013
Compliments of Joni and Friends
PO Box 3333 Agoura Hills, CA 91376