Dear Rev. Know it all

I am a recent widow with lots of time on my hands to think of how Bob is doing. I am also a 67 year old Grandma and the Grandchildren and I were wondering how the spirit of Bob in Heaven is recognized by all family members who have predeceased him. In other words does the spirit have the same features as the human form had. I guess in a way I want to know how he will recognize me when I arrive many years from now. Also along the same lines, I have a nephew who died 30 years ago at the age of 12 and have always wondered if he has become an adult or will he always remain a child. I'm sure this sounds a bit silly coming from a Grandma, but I know you will have an answer of some kind for me and I appreciate your working on it for me.

Yours truly,  

Hope Phull

Dear Hope,

St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, that if we have believed for this life alone, we are the saddest of men. The Church seems to go through mood swings. In one era it’s  all about the world to come, and in another it’s all about this world. We are going through a “this worldly” era at the present, I suspect. The truth is that heaven and earth aren’t very far away from each other. I’ve shared in previous articles about an unusual part of my ministry. I get to meet a lot of people who’ve died and lived to tell about it. You know, the beyond and back, the light, the tunnel, that sort of thing. It’s not good science, and it’s not even good theology, but it sure is interesting. The first fellow I met who’d had the experience said some things that were particularly moving. He said that he could hear all the prayers of humanity become like one prayer before God, and that it wasn’t just our prayers that rose to heaven, but that when we prayed we became one spirit standing before God’s throne. He also said that there was a kind of judgment but the thing that most bothered him was that he knew the answers before he was asked the questions.  I wonder if he wasn’t experiencing things from God’s point of view. You and I live in time and space. It’s the only way our limited perception can take anything in. For God, everything is here and everything is now. When you and I talk about heaven, all we can do is use the little categories that we experience here and now, but St. Paul tells us that, one day, we will know as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12) “Now we see through a glass darkly but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known.”  St. Paul seems to say that we will know what God knows and know it in the way God knows it!!!

People always worry about whether or not we will recognize our loved ones, or will we be as close to them as we are here. I suspect that we will know them completely and that we will be completely united with them. Here I can love only a few and then only a little. There and then I will love as God loves; infinitely and all.  Our loves and friendships here, our joys and even our pleasures are only dim reflections, only faint whispers of what life is really like. They are like the distant whiff of a sumptuous banquet. We can no more compare our knowledge of heaven to what heaven is than the child in the womb can describe the sunlight. Perhaps Socrates was right about the cave. The reality of the world to come and our limited affections in this sad place can only begin to tell us of the wonder of the Infinite and the joy of perfect love that awaits those who choose the God who has chosen them. St. Paul says in 1^st Corinthians 2:9 “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” I don’t know what is to come, I only know that it is wonderful and that when we are with the Lord in prayer we are already there, whether we perceive it or not. When we pray from our hearts we are with those we love if they, too, are in God’s embrace.

As for the age problem, God sees us all as children. “Unless we become as little children....” 

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1 John 3, 1-3)

We will be children, infinitely wise, infinitely innocent, infinitely young and infinitely old children. You will recognize Bob and your nephew better than you recognized them here. If Jesus was telling the truth, and I think He was and that He still is, it will all get better and better, better than we can ask or imagine. Trust Him!

Sincerely,

Rev. Know-it-all