Enhanced in Heaven

Yesterday was another personal anniversary. Birthdays during childhood and even teenage years are filled with excitement, the next eagerly anticipated, a state of affairs that possibly returns when one hits 90. In our middle years, however, we greet these days with apathy, as an unimpressive product of inevitability, or, worse still, foreboding. The middle-aged Christian can afford to be a little more sanguine: it is another year for which God has granted breath, and another year closer to our wonderful homecoming.

I found a plastic plate which I drew upon at nursery school. It has a financial value of zilch but it is one of my oldest, personal possessions. Upon it is a picture of me, drawn by me aged four. Two things struck me as I assessed it while giving it a wash in the sink. Firstly, my artistic abilities have barely improved, and secondly, the Alan depicted is playing with toy soldiers. I no longer play with them, but I am still known to collect them. In a sense, therefore, nothing at all has changed. My body has grown (upwards and outwards), my hair has changed (from blonde - not green, as the plate suggests - to dark and then to grey) and I know more than I did back then (both good and bad). Somehow, the adult versions of us are more enhanced and enlarged versions of our child-selves. Perhaps this is what we shall be like in heaven. While bereft of a sinful nature and those annoying and godless personality flaws that we all from time to time exhibit, we shall still be ourselves but, somehow, transformed and enhanced. I do not understand how, but I do know that it will be worth the wait.

Back to that plate. I remember my nursery nurse asking me what I would do with my plate once it was safely home. I informed her that I intended to eat a jam butty on it. I do not know if I ever did, or if this remains an ambition unfulfilled. Readers may guess whether I enjoyed such a meal on the said plate for yesterday’s birthday, but this highlights another aspect of heaven: it will be the realisation and fulfilment of every longing, every ambition, every proper desire - though jam butties may not be on the menu.

Look up and look forward!