Conventions, Reunions, and Thoughts on Heaven

Atrium at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel

We are staying right across the pike from Opryland, in Nashville. Starting with a pre-conference and then the main conference beginning tomorrow, we are spending these days in the company of six thousand K-12 teachers from our denomination's educational system in the United States and Canada. Six thousand teachers. For one who has never attended a school with more than a couple thousand students in it, it's mind-boggling.

A statistic professor friend reports on a recent study of higher education

These denominational teacher conventions have taken place three times in the last twelve years;  Husband and I have attended all three. 

At the first convention we had just begun dating; it was an event where many colleagues of ours (we were both seasoned, well-networked educators) first saw us together.  It was a surprise to many, and fun for us. At the time of the second convention, Husband was starting his doctoral program from a university in Michigan. Now he's begun his year off work to gather data and write his dissertation, while I'm two weeks into my new job, happily returned to teacher education in California.

Missionary kid friends from my high school in Singapore, meeting up at the convention. 
Left to right: A principal of a school in Korea, me, a nurse from Huntsville, Alabama, and a German teacher from a school about two hours outside Berlin.

These conventions are times of reunion. In my experience they are both exasperating, and a foretaste of heaven. Exasperating, because just as you're seeing one long-lost friend, colleague or former student, another one comes up, and you can hardly do justice to each opportunity to reconnect and catch up on each other's lives. These conventions are a foretaste of heaven because I get to see the love and esteem for me in so many faces, the joy of meeting up again with friends and former students, and of watching other friends meet in the hallways, lobbies and breakout session rooms. There is talk, touch and laughter, and hearts are full. I can't begin to imagine the joy and excitement that it will be when Heaven happens, but there are little whiffs of it in this teacher convention.

Much laughter as a colleague presents a gag gift to my new boss just before a session.

"I think we take Bible descriptions of heaven too literally," I told one of my former college professors this morning. He had been wondering aloud, as we met over breakfast at the hotel, about whether we would be able to create things in heaven. Heaven, I theorized to him, is unimaginable. The Revelator just did the best he could to describe it in the last book of the Bible, but I'm certain that he fell short and didn't tell us nearly enough. "We like building things and creating things here; why would we not continue that in eternity?" I asked. My old professor agreed.

Last night I listened to a speaker talking about Christian higher education. He declared that tension is good, and that pain can be helpful. Tension, he said, is an indication that something is alive, because everything living is in tension of some sort. He noted the job that pain does in keeping us safe, in serving as a prelude to pleasure (think of hunger, and then the subsequent taste of delicious food), and in teaching us new things. He argued that there would be both tension and pain in heaven, because they both provide benefits and go with living. It was an interesting proposition. I'm still thinking about it.

Fruit salad: a good candidate for a heavenly menu

So what do I think about heaven? Some might think me childish, but I do believe that there will be a heaven, that it will be literal, and that it will be a surprise in just about every way. I believe that those who will be there will have lived in ways that honor and reflect God's character in some way. I believe that most of us will be surprised at just who will be shown to fit that description. I believe that we will find God to be both completely unexpected and overwhelmingly familiar. I believe that heaven will be incredible, that it will include learning new things, having reunions, catching up on each other's stories, much laughter, and many expressions of love, affirmation and gratitude. 

And while I could be off-base on all that I believe about heaven, while I may not have the foggiest idea about what it's really like, I'm raising my hand to volunteer to go there. Because whatever it is, I will finally be moving Home. 

I can't wait.