ON THE HOPE OF THINGS TO COME by ZACH

ON THE HOPE OF THINGS TO COME          by Zach Lange

My son, you have now asked the same question of God that I asked as a young man and still ask today. You have wondered if it is wrong to want the life of the resurrection to be a state in which you dwell in eternity with your true love by your side, immortal and happy together, raising your children in the uncreated light of God like an unfallen Adam and Eve in paradise. I do not believe that God has placed this desire in your heart for no reason. Is this not the desire of a good man’s heart even here on earth where the Serpent is king and death still corrupts all visible things? Even here, where confusion reigns, our hearts yearn for that life. That is the hope of a child of God. And it is the good and true hope of a man and woman to extend the boundaries of their love by bringing children into existence.

I do not believe God intends to take any such good desires away, because it is His commandment to Adam and Eve before the fall to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. But there may be mysteries at work here that we know little about. C.S. Lewis once described our human hopes for the world to come, comparing them to a child who really likes chocolate. I don’t remember exactly how he described it but I will borrow his idea. It went something like what follows. This young child prays to God and says, “Lord, will heaven be a place where I can have all the chocolate I want? If not, why would I want to go?” The child’s deepest desire at this stage in his life is for chocolate, and so he can’t imagine heaven being anything other than a place like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Soon chocolate gives way to video games, or sports.  Heaven must be an eternal adventure, a swashbuckling adventure where dragons are slain and great games are played throughout the universe. But then he grows yet more in wisdom and experience. He matures. Sports and video games are no longer as interesting as they used to be. He realizes it was not video games or sports but ladies that are interesting. He is closer to the truth. Then one Lady in particular becomes his wife and, if he has found a good wife, he sees heaven as a place where they can realize all their hopes together. This is good. But his desire will not rest there forever. For, because he is one who hears the voice of the Lord in his heart, his desire will continue to grow toward the love that flows to him from above. This is the absolute Love which he knows to be the origin of the love he bears for his wife and children. He knows then that heaven cannot be anything less than unbroken communion with the Holy Trinity. Does this mean that all of his previous desires were futile or that they will not have their place in that holy communion? Surely not. Aside from the endless supply of chocolate, his desires are surely part of the eternal plan of God.  Adventure leads us to Mystery, True Love leads us to know the Other, Family brings us into Communion, all of these are God’s grace reaching out that we may know Him.

When we grow in maturity beyond where we are now, who knows what desires God will place in our heart to draw us nearer to our eternal destiny? We are still children hoping for the things we know and love to be made permanent. There is nothing wrong with that so long as we are open to grow past our present favorite things toward the greater things that God has planned to reveal. We may wake in the resurrection and find that all we hoped for was a pittance compared to what God wants to give, but we will also see that the true desires of our heart are there in the glory of His gifts and that what once was a shadow is now standing whole and real before us. ( Zach to his son Seth)