Each Tuesday morning I go to the Care Center to lead a service for the assisted living residents there. We sing a few songs and I teach something from the scriptures. Afterward I try to go by a few rooms and visit with some of our members. This morning I had the privilege of going to see our oldest living member. She is one hundred one!
She is frail but her spirit is strong. Today she was very sleepy and while I visited her with a senior adult lady from our church she had a hard time hearing and communicating. She kept fighting drifting off to sleep. That is when the other lady told her, “One day you are going to go to sleep and wake up in the arms of Jesus!”
That has stuck with me through out the day. Just a few moments earlier I visited with a lady who will turn one hundred on October 29th. I can’t imagine the frustration mixed with the joys of living to be such a ripe old age. I know at forty three I cannot do things I used to do at twenty three and thirty three. I went to the fitness center early this morning before coming to work. I began working my way up doing presses with dumbbells. I had to stop way short of the weight I was lifting back at Howard Payne University. I cannot fathom having the limitations of fifty seven more years on this body.
We all know that we will not live forever and drifting off to sleep one day and waking up in the arms of Jesus with a glorified body and into our everlasting reward defies imagination. What a day that will be. Jim Hill penned those very words in a hymn. “There is coming a day when no heart aches shall come – no more clouds in the sky
No more tears to dim the eye. All is peace forevermore on that happy golden shore.
There’ll be no sorrow there, no more burdens to bear, no more sickness, no pain
no more parting over there. And forever I will be with the One who died for me.
(chorus) What a day, glorious day that will be! What a day that will be when my Jesus
I shall see, and I look upon His face – The One who saved me by His grace.
When He takes me by the hand and leads me through the Promised Land;
What a day, glorious day that will be!
There must come a point when it is more appealing to look over yonder into eternity than to try to cling to what is left behind here. There comes a day when we have more loved ones over there than we have of those left behind here. There comes a day when every day is a labor as our bodies wear down and begin to fail while we linger here and start to contemplate the glorified bodies we will receive in Heaven. What a day that will be indeed.
[I Cor 2:9] gives great hope for those who long to wake up in the arms of Jesus. “But it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
Don’t read over that too fast. No eye has seen anything that can compare to the beauty and splendor of Heaven. No mountain range, sea shore, scenic forest, or picturesque sunset can compare to the glory of Heaven. Our eyes have never beheld such beauty and wonders and that does not even begin to describe what we will see in Jesus. There are no words. It will be something we will have to experience for ourselves.
No ear has ever heard anything as beautiful as the sounds that will resound in Heaven. I do not know what they all will be but I do know one anthem that will be played over and over again night and day. “And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within, and day and night they do not cease to say, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God, The Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.’ And the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever.” [Rev 5:8-9] Louder than any choir you have ever heard, more in harmony and pleasing to the ear than any singer you have enjoyed will be this booming chorus reverberating the halls of Heaven and penetrating our souls.
Still we are not finished. No man has ever come close to imagining what awaits us in Heaven. Colors will be brighter. Our thoughts higher, our senses greater, our hearts purer, and the glory of God more brilliant than the sun. No painter could capture this with oil paints on a canvas. No writer could lasso and corral the right words to convey what Heaven is like. It defies both description and imagination. Still we are contemplating Heaven and not the King of Glory. We do not have that kind of mental capacity this side of eternity. It would blow our circuits.
Alas, we are left with the simple hope and trust that one day each of us who had trusted Jesus Christ as our Savior will breathe our last breath here and wake up in the arms of Jesus. O what a glorious day that will be.
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