SHSUEH

What do you look forward to when meeting Jesus?

I just finished reading the book Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldridge. It’s an amazing book, and I recommend it to everyone! 

At the end of the book, John discusses an interview he had where he was asked, “What do you look forward to most on the day you meet Jesus?” His answer was “Spearfishing.” 

What do I look forward to when meeting Jesus? My first thought was, “Wow, imagine taking a picture of Jesus. What would that look like? It’d probably be really bright…extremely overexposed.” 

While I know there are a million reasons why one takes a picture, or why we love photos, but the one main one that comes to mind is to capture a memory. We love taking pictures - we love seeing pictures - because it reminds us or takes us back to a previous time. Whether it was enjoyable or painful, the exclamations of our life are captured in photos. Our memories are most cemented through pictures, and when you think back to your childhood, you most likely have a picture of you. What would it cost you if you were to lose those memories or those photos? Data recovery specialists charge thousands for their services, and photographers can cost a premium. We value photographs because they are the snapshots of our lives - the highlights, the exclamation marks - the good and bad.

In a roundabout way, let me mention the name Day 7 and the meaning behind it. The name “Day 7” is a reference to the story of creation in the Bible. God creates a lot of awesome stuff, like trees, birds, and people…then on the seventh day he rests. I imagine that he worshipped and enjoyed his creation because it was beautiful and nothing could compare to it! God did not need to look at photos of his creation. I imagine he could just look out and see a snapshot of his creation in one piece. God, being omniscient and omnipresent, saw that his creation was good. It happened on day 1, all the way through day 7, and on day 7, I imagine he saw a lot of good stuff. Then Monday rolls back around, and I imagine that it continued, but in a different way. Kind of like if you were to stand on the Grand Canyon, you could see a lot. It wouldn’t do justice to look at a photo of the grand canyon while staring at the real thing. Photos seem to point us to something…something greater than ourselves…and when in the presence of the real thing, our mind goes blank. Or more like speechless. Because words don’t do it justice. 

But this brings me to what I really wanted to write about, and that’s my realization of what it will be like when we’re in heaven. We won’t need pictures in heaven. Just like how pictures on earth are snapshots of the exclamation marks in our past, the very presence of God will be the greatest thing we could see, like a never ending snapshot of the happiest moment in our life that gets better and better every second of eternity. It will be the realization of a memory that we thought was good - but pale in comparison to this. You know that picture in Soularium of the girl running with a balloon? We all want it in our lives, but that’s just a picture of something bigger and more beautiful because we’ve all been given a dream that we can’t seem to ever remember remember. Glimpses here and there, but never the whole picture. The beauty of the Grand Canyon is made small compared to the presence and love of God. It’s a never ending feast to satisfy the starvation of humanity. And when we’re in heaven, we’ll know that we’ve been craving Jesus all along. Our whole lives, we’ve been hungry and we just don’t know what it is. In heaven, the angels sing “holy holy holy” for eternity, and it gets better after each syllable because every second will be a new experience of God’s love and character. It will be “day 7” for eternity, and we won’t have to fret about Monday because we’ll be right where God wants us - worshipping and enjoying him. There are no calendars, clocks, or pictures because we will have exactly what we’ve been searching for right in front of us. We’ll have what we remembered all along. It will be like the moment when you suddenly remember a small piece of your dream, but it won’t be small, it will be so overwhelmingly real. There are no tissues because JESUS will wipe every tear of JOY with his very finger. 

So remember that you are hungry. Whatever you’re feeding on, remember it’s tiny in comparison to the food God is offering for us in heaven. That’s what I look forward to when meeting Jesus…being satisfied - satisfied in every single sense of the human soul.