For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. —1 Corinthians 15:52 (NIV)
When my friend went on hospice care, she said, “I’ve never liked surprises, not even good ones. I want to know what dying and heaven are like.” She’d certainly given me a challenging assignment! Fortunately, I found a book by a chaplain that described what people saw, heard, and felt during near-death experiences.
The next weekend our family traveled to the coast. When my son John and I were walking along the beach, we noticed that the lowering tide had stranded hundreds of helpless starfish on the shore. “You’d think that the starfish would know better by now not to get so close to the beach,” John remarked.
READ MORE: A JOURNEY TO HEAVEN
As he tossed a starfish back into the surf, I got to thinking that starfish don’t know to avoid the shore because they have no grasp of the fact that there’s a parallel world of dry land that isn’t filled with water like the one where they’ve lived all their lives.
I thought about how, although I’m made of physical working parts, I haven’t been left clueless that there’s a very real, unseen spiritual world that exists. I smiled as I thought, My friend has done an excellent job of living in both the physical and spiritual worlds all her life. She’ll probably be quite surprised when she reaches heaven that she’s not really surprised after all!
Dear heavenly Father, help me as I live this day on earth to become no stranger to heaven by becoming much closer to You. Amen.
