Love Covers All

When I do grief work as a Spiritual Director, I think one of the top ten questions I’ve been asked is, will I see my loved one again in heaven?  When we lose someone, we often have fear that our lifetime relationships with those we love have ended and we’ll not see our loved one again.  That is a lot to swallow. 

I remember asking my dad once when I was a teenager, what he thought heaven was like.  I liked his answer.  In a nutshell this is what he said:

1. Better than earth
2. Different than earth because God’s light shines all over heaven and permeates everything
3. Glorious
4. Filled with love, peace, joy, and all the fruit of the Spirit.
5. Contains all the good we experienced and felt on earth.

What was interesting is that he didn’t try to physically describe heaven.  Those of us from the Western Hemisphere tend to look to the physical aspects in order to describe our experiences.  While there are some references to heaven in scripture, for a total picture we need to look to the whole of scripture and consider the character and nature of God.  What do we know from scripture about the character of God related to the items above?

1. God is good and looks out for our good (Romans 8:28, Genesis 1, Revelation 21)
2. God is pure light and in Him there is no darkness (Amos 4:13, John 1:4-5, Acts 26:23, I Peter 2:9)
3. Glorious  (Deut. 4:31, Deut. 4:35-40)
4. God (Father, Son and Spirit) are the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22)
5. All the good.  Now, this just makes good sense.  God is good and every part of US and in us is from God.  So, when we see God all the darkness will be gone and the only thing that will remain is light and goodness from God’s love since in God there is no darkness at all. 

To answer the question, everything good will remain.  All the love will remain.  Love is stronger than death.