I have been battling with a severe bout of depression during the past few days. I have been hankering for affirmation and assurances. I am not sad. It is more like feelings of disappointment, frustration and a malaise and feeling that there is a huge gaping and empty hole inside me.
This morning, to help me win this battle, I started imagining what heaven might be like. I don’t think heaven is singing with the angels in perpetuity. That would eventually become so boring. I don’t believe heaven is about having answers to all the questions bugging me while here on earth. It might be that but many of my questions now will no longer matter after I have died. It is not about seeing God, for God is infinite to be seen by my human eyes or even ‘seen’ by my human mind.
I imagine heaven as being in the presence of God and being totally enveloped by that presence. It is like standing before a blinding light without going blind; being suffused with a reassuring warmth without getting burned. It is like feeling your heart being filled with goodness and joy to the point of it exploding and it does actually explode in one orgasmic explosion of delightful contentment and exquisite pleasure that run through my whole being and not just in my groins. And it goes on and on, like a multiple orgasm. I am with all the people whom I have ever met during my life and I now know why they were in my life and I in theirs. I have all the events of my life before me and I now know why these things had come to pass in my life. And this can go on for eternity? Yes, for then I shall be waxing and waning with the divine rhythm in the infinite presence of God, like a perpetual wave on an endless ocean.
In my moment of depression and desolation, I pray for a clearer understanding of and a deeper faith in this vision and reality.
When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive.
John 4:43-54