In Revelations 21:4 we are given these promises: He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things will be gone forever.

Can you imagine such a world? With everything that may have gone wrong in our lives and in our world and everything that will continue to cause us pain and suffering as long as our earthly journey lasts, it is very difficult to imagine, isn’t it?  We are used to some form of suffering  in our lives from the time we enter this world.  We experience pain or discomfort as infants and those agonies and hurts become increasingly more serious the longer we live. The sorrow of losing someone we love, watching loved ones suffer and emotional and physical pain we ourselves endure are examples of what we experience and all take a toll on us.

Once again, read the verse from Revelations.  This is great news for us!  We can look forward to this home of lasting peace. Someday, all the ways we suffer and how they trouble us will be gone. God promised this to us.  Jesus told us after His resurrection that He was going to prepare a place for us.  When this life is finished, we will wake up and see the face of the Lord.  How wonderful will that be!

I often wonder about expressions like “Grandma is watching out for me from Heaven.” I personally don’t believe our loved ones are doing that. If that were true, being in heaven would just be a continuation of what they experienced on earth. Watching us continue to bumble along with all of our earthly issues would cause continuing sorrow, suffering and pain for them. God’s promise of lasting peace would not be fulfilled and being in Heaven would be like still existing on Earth.  I think we sense our loved one’s presence in our lives after they are gone.  Not in some mystic, eerie way like a ghost but in the love they gave us, the lessons we learned from them and the positive gifts we were given because of their existence in our lives.

We do have someone watching us from Heaven however and that is our Heavenly Father.  He is guiding us and giving us His unconditional love at all times.  If we have accepted the salvation of the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross and believe in Him and follow His will for us, we will see those loved ones again and even more importantly, we will see God face-to-face! We need to thank God for His gift of Heaven and for our future of lasting peace and love! Thanks be to God!

Patty