Forever After
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Last Sunday was our 57th
wedding anniversary and for the occasion I sent Carolyn an anniversary card depicting
two frogs, one of which says to the other, “I’ll love you till I croak.” To
which I added my own scrawl: “And beyond!”
I’m sometimes asked, “Will
we know and love one another in heaven?” George MacDonald answers that question
with a counter–question: ”Will we be bigger fools in heaven than we are here?” Of
course we will know and be known, love and be loved throughout eternity.[1]
Love is a divinely designed, essential part of our joy. We are not designed to be solitary beings, but lovers like God himself. And just as God on earth loved every person in a special way, so we are designed to love people specially. (Jesus had special friends: his disciples, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.)
Love is one of the greatest of
God’s gifts to us and God’s gifts are “irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Our
family and special friends will always
be our family and special friends. Heaven,
thus, is just another place for love to grow. We never love well enough here;
we will never be loved well enough. But in heaven we will love and be loved to
perfection.
One of my favorite reads is George
MacDonald’s novel The Golden Key, a
tale of two children Mossy and Tangle, their love for one another and their
journey together to find the door that can be opened with a golden key (Jesus).
They love, marry and grow old together and then are lost to one another when Tangle
dies. Mossy, old, lonely and foot-weary, finally arrives at the “place from
which the shadows fall.”
He came to a great precipice of
rock, up which he could discover but one path. Nor did this lead him farther
than halfway up the rock, where it ended on a platform. Here he stood and
pondered. It could not be that the way stopped here, else what was the path
for? It was a rough path, not very plain, yet certainly a path. He examined the
face of the rock. It was smooth as glass. But as his eyes kept roving
hopelessly over it, something glittered, and he caught sight of a row of small
sapphires. They bordered a little hole in the rock.
He tried the key. It fitted. It turned. A
great clang and clash, as of iron bolts on huge brazen caldrons, echoed
thunderously within. He drew out the key. The rock in front of him began to
fall. He retreated from it as far as the breadth of the platform would allow. A
great slab fell at his feet. In front was still the solid rock, with this one
slab fallen forward out of it. But the moment he stepped upon it, a second
fell, just short of the edge of the first, making the next step of a stair,
which thus kept dropping itself before him as he ascended into the heart of the
precipice. It led him into a hall fit for such an approach—irregular and rude
in formation, but floor, sides, pillars, and vaulted roof, all one mass of
shining stones of every color that light can show. In the centre stood seven
columns, ranged from red to violet. And on the pedestal of one of them sat a
woman, motionless, with her face bowed upon her knees. Seven years had she sat
there waiting. She lifted her head as Mossy drew near. It was Tangle. Her hair
had grown to her feet, and was rippled like the windless sea on broad sands.
Her face was beautiful, like her grandmother’s, and as still and peaceful as
that of the Old Man of the Fire. Her form was tall and noble. Yet Mossy knew
her at once.
"How beautiful you are, Tangle!” he said,
in delight and astonishment.
"Am
I?” she returned. "Oh, I have waited for you so long! But you, you are the
Old Man of the Sea. No. You are like the Old Man of the Earth. No, no. You are
like the oldest man of all. You are like them all. And yet you are my own old Mossy!
DHR
[1] Jesus said, “At
the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will
be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30)—a verse Carolyn ascribes to a scribal
error. But Jesus’ statement about marriage doesn’t say anything about love in
the hereafter. It was made in response to the Sadducees that posed the question
of multiple marriages and how a man that had seven wives on earth could sort
them out in heaven. It was a trick question since the Sadducees didn’t believe
in the resurrection (that’s why they were sad, you see) and only wanted to show
how absurd the idea must be. Jesus replied that the question was
irrelevant because there will be no “marriage” in heaven for there will be no
need for it. We will be like the angels that live forever, and do not
procreate. (A cherub, despite Rubens pudgy, little munchkins, is not a baby
angel. It’s the Hebrew singular form of cherubim.)
Marriage as an institution will be
passé, because there will be no need to conceive and nurture children, nor will
there be any need to safeguard our commitment to one another. But we will love one
another forever for “love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8).
