A favorite Easter Canticle is “This is the Feast” with it’s text from Revelation sung to the Lord seated on the heavenly throne:

“Blessing and honor and glory and might be to God and the Lamb forever.”

I found a devotion written on that part of Revelation by Nils Laache, a popular nineteenth-century Lutheran pastor. He writes:

“Behold them now before the throne of God, clothed with their white robes and palms in their hands! There Moses is no longer troubled by the stubbornness of the people; there Job does not lose his riches, his children, his health, and his honor; there the eyes of Peter are not moist with tears; there Paul is rid of his thorn in the flesh; there Nehemiah is no longer a pitiful sight to see by reason of sadness on account of the city of God. Here on earth all believers have their afflictions, and are to be prepared to bear the cross after the Savior every day. But in the world to come they all are forever delivered from all evil; for there sin has disappeared, and with it sorrow and suffering and death.”

I didn’t preach often about heaven because Jesus doesn’t describe it. I like Pastor Laache’s approach of taking Biblical persons and describing them in heaven without the strife that faced them in earthly life. What is heaven like? It’s life without sorrow, suffering or death. It is to be with Christ, the Lamb, on his throne, and that is enough for us to know.

Read Revelation 5:11-13 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne