Heaven Is for Real Read online

  baby. Desperate to get her child back, the mother of the living boy

  suggests that King Solomon, widely known for his wisdom, could settle the

  matter and determine who the real mother was of the living infant. In the

  biblical story, King Solomon devises a way to find out what is in each

  woman’s heart.

  “Cut the child in half!” the king decrees. “Give half to one and half to the

  other.”

  The grieving mother agrees to the solution, but the real mother reveals

  her love, crying out, “No! Let her have the child!” And that’s how the wise

  king figured out which mother was tel ing the truth, and it’s where we get

  the common phrase, “a Solomonic solution.”

  I came to the end of the story, and Colton and I had our usual good-

  natured argument over reading it again (and again and again). This time, I

  won. As we knelt on the floor to pray, I laid the book aside on the carpet,

  and it fel open to an il ustration that pictured King Solomon sitting on his

  throne. It dawned on me that the Bible talks about God’s throne in several

  places. For example, the author of the book of Hebrews urges believers to

  “approach the throne of grace with confidence,”1 and says that after Jesus

  had completed his work on earth, he “sat down at the right hand of the

  throne of God.”2 And there’s that glorious chapter in the book of Revelation

  that describes God’s throne:

  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,

  prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice

  from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with

  them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

  He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or

  crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

  He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” . . .

  I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are

  its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of

  God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.3

  “Hey, Colton,” I said, kneeling next to him, “when you were in heaven, did

  you ever see God’s throne?”

  Colton looked at me quizzical y. “What’s a throne, Daddy?”

  I picked up the Bible storybook and pointed to the picture of Solomon

  seated in his court. “A throne is like the king’s chair. It’s the chair that only

  the king can sit in.”

  “Oh, yeah! I saw that a bunch of times!” Colton said.

  My heart sped up a little. Was I real y going to get a glimpse into the

  throne room of heaven? “Wel , what did God’s throne look like?”

  “It was big, Dad . . . really, really big, because God is the biggest one

  there is. And he real y, real y loves us, Dad. You can’t belieeeeve how

  much he loves us!”

  When he said this, a contrast struck me: Colton, a little guy, was talking

  about a being so big—but in the next breath, he was talking about love. For

  one thing, God’s size clearly wasn’t scary to Colton, but it was also

  interesting to me that as eager as Colton was to tel about what God

  looked like, he was just as eager to tel me what God felt like toward us.

  “And do you know that Jesus sits right next to God?” Colton went on

  excitedly. “Jesus’ chair is right next to his Dad’s!”

  That blew me away. There’s no way a four-year-old knows that. It was

  another one of those moments when I thought, He had to have seen this.

  I was pretty sure he had never even heard of the book of Hebrews, but

  there was one way to find out.

  “Colton, which side of God’s throne was Jesus sitting on?” I asked.

  Colton climbed up on the bed and faced me on his knees. “Wel , pretend

  like you’re in God’s throne. Jesus sat right there,” he said, pointing to my

  right side.

  The Hebrews passage flashed into my mind: “Let us fix our eyes on

  Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him

  endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of

  the throne of God.”4

  Wow. Here was a rare case where I had tested Colton’s memories

  against what the Bible says, and he passed without batting an eye. But

  now I had another question, one I didn’t know the answer to, at least not an

  answer from the Bible.

  “Wel , who sits on the other side of God’s throne?” I said.

  “Oh, that’s easy, Dad. That’s where the angel Gabriel is. He’s real y

  nice.”

  Gabriel. That makes sense. I remembered the story of John the Baptist

  and the moment when Gabriel arrived to deliver the news of John the

  Baptist’s coming birth.

  But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard.

  Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He

  will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will

  be great in the sight of the Lord. . . .”

  Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my

  wife is well along in years.”

  The angel answered, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have

  been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.”5

  “I stand in the presence of God,” Gabriel told Zechariah. And now, more

  than two thousand years later, my little boy was tel ing me the same thing.

  So I’d had my glimpse into God’s throne room, but Colton’s descriptions

  had me wondering: if God the Father was seated on his throne with Jesus

  on his right and Gabriel on his left, where was Colton?

  Colton had already crawled underneath his blanket, his blond head

  nestled against a Spider-Man pil owcase. “Where did you sit, Colton?” I

  asked.

  “They brought in a little chair for me,” he said, smiling. “I sat by God the

  Holy Spirit. Did you know that God is three persons, Dad?”

  “Yeah, I think I know that one,” I said and smiled.

  “I was sitting by God the Holy Spirit because I was praying for you. You

  needed the Holy Spirit, so I prayed for you.”

  This took my breath away. Colton saying that he was praying for me in

  heaven reminded me of the letter to the Hebrews, where the writer says:

  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of

  witnesses . . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”6

  “What does God look like?” I said. “God the Holy Spirit?”

  Colton furrowed his brow. “Hmm, that’s kind of a hard one . . . he’s kind

  of blue.”

  Just as I was trying to picture that, Colton shifted course again. “You

  know, that’s where I met Pop.”

  “You met Pop sitting by the Holy Spirit?”

  Colton nodded vigorously, smiling at what seemed a pleasant memory.

  “Yep. Pop came up to me and said, ‘Is Todd your dad?’ And I said yes.

  And Pop said, ‘He’s my grandson.’”

  How many times, when I presided over a funeral, had mourners

  delivered the usual wel -meaning platitudes
: “Wel , she’s in a better place,”

  or “We know he’s looking down on us, smiling,” or “You’l see him again.”

  Of course, I believed those things in theory, but to be honest, I couldn’t

  picture them. Now, with what Colton had said about Pop and about his

  sister, I began to think about heaven in a different way. Not just a place with

  jeweled gates, shining rivers, and streets of gold, but a realm of joy and

  fel owship, both for those who are with us in eternity and those stil on earth,

  whose arrival we eagerly anticipated. A place where I would one day walk

  and talk with my grandfather who had meant so much to me, and with the

  daughter I had never met.

  With al my heart, I wanted to believe. At that moment, the details of our

  conversations began to pile up in my mind like a stack of Polaroids—

  pictures of heaven that seemed uncannily accurate from the descriptions

  we al have available to us in the Bible—al of us who can read, that is. But

  these details were obscure to most adults, much less a kid of Colton’s

  young age. The nature of the Trinity, the role of the Holy Spirit, Jesus sitting

  at the right hand of God.

  I believed. But how could I be sure?

  I smoothed Colton’s blanket across his chest and tucked him in snug the

  way he liked—and for the first time since he started talking about heaven, I

  intentional y tried to trip him up. “I remember you saying you stayed with

  Pop,” I said. “So when it got dark and you went home with Pop, what did

  you two do?”

  Suddenly serious, Colton scowled at me. “It doesn’t get dark in heaven,

  Dad! Who told you that?”

  I held my ground. “What do you mean it doesn’t get dark?”

  “God and Jesus light up heaven. It never gets dark. It’s always bright.”

  The joke was on me. Not only had Colton not fal en for the “when it gets

  dark in heaven” trick, but he could tel me why it didn’t get dark: “The city

  does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives

  it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.”7

  NINETEEN

  JESUS REALLY LOVES THE CHILDREN

  For months in late 2003 and early 2004, there was a certain set of things

  that Colton seemed to fixate on. He talked about death and dying more

  weird—really weird—for a kid his age. He also shared more about what

  heaven looks like. These details came out in bits and pieces over dinner,

  while he ran errands with Sonja and me, and during the general flow of life.

  He saw the gates of heaven, he said: “They were made of gold and

  there were pearls on them.” The heavenly city itself was made of

  something shiny, “like gold or silver.” The flowers and trees in heaven were

  “beautiful,” and there were animals of every kind.

  No matter what new tidbits he revealed, though, Colton had one

  consistent theme: he talked constantly about how much Jesus loves the

  children. I mean that: constantly.

  He would wake up in the morning and tel me: “Hey Dad, Jesus told me

  to tel you, He real y loves the children.”

  Over dinner at night: “Remember, Jesus real y loves the children.”

  Before bed, as I helped him brush his teeth, “Hey, Daddy don’t forget,”

  he’d say, garbling the words through a mouthful of toothpaste foam, “Jesus

  said he real y, really loves the children!”

  Sonja got the same treatment. She had begun working part-time again

  by then, and on the days she stayed home with Colton, he chirped al day

  long about Jesus loving the children. It got so that it didn’t matter what Bible

  story she or I read to our tiny evangelist at night, whether from the Old

  Testament, the New Testament, about Moses or Noah or King Solomon,

  Colton wrapped up the night with the same message: “Jesus loves the

  children!”

  Final y I had to tel him, “Colton, we get it. You can stop. When I get to

  heaven, you are exonerated. I wil tel Jesus you did your job.”

  We might have grown weary of Colton’s nonstop message about Jesus’

  love for kids, but it did transform the way we approached children’s

  ministry in our church. Sonja had always been torn between singing on the

  worship team during Sunday morning services and going downstairs to

  teach Sunday school for the kids. And while she knew that statistics show

  most people who profess faith in Christ do so at a young age, it was

  Colton’s passionate insistence on Christ’s love for children that gave Sonja

  fresh energy for our kids’ ministry.

  I also became bolder about asking church members to serve in our

  children’s ministry. Over the years, I’d had to fight to get people to sign up

  to teach Sunday school. They would give me the verbal stiff-arm, saying, “I

  did my turn last year,” or “I’m too old for that.”

  Now, when I ran into those same excuses, I lovingly reminded people

  that Jesus clearly viewed children as precious—and that if he loved kids

  enough to say that adults should be more like them, we should spend more

  time loving them too.

  During that time, Colton had also become obsessed with rainbows. Al his

  talk about the magnificent colors in heaven reminded Sonja and me of the

  book of Revelation, where the apostle John wrote specifical y about the

  rainbow surrounding God’s throne,1 and where he describes heaven as a

  gleaming city of gold:

  The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The

  foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was

  jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the

  sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth

  chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.2

  Some of those precious stones are of colors that are familiar to us: the

  rich violet of amethyst, the bril iant green of emerald, the translucent gold of

  topaz, the depthless black of onyx. Others are less common: chrysolite,

  which is light to olive green; jacinth, a transparent red. Beryl occurs in many

  colors, from light pink to deep green to aquamarine.

  With its unfamiliar gemstones, John’s description is so exotic to us that

  we have to look up the minerals to find out what colors he was talking

  about; grown-up theologians want to be precise. But if a kid saw al those

  colors, he might sum them up in one simple word: rainbow.

  So when, in the spring of 2004, the most bril iant rainbow we’d ever seen

  appeared over Imperial, we cal ed him outside to take a look.

  Sonja was the first to see it. By then, she was just a few weeks pregnant

  with the baby we now considered definitively as our fourth child. It was a

  warm, sunny day, and she’d gone to open the front door and let the

  freshness into the house. “Hey, you guys, come see this!” she cal ed.

  From the kitchen, I crossed the dining room to the front door and was

  astonished to see a rainbow so bright, so vivid, that it looked like an

  artist’s painting of the Perfect Rainbow. Or a kid with a brand-new box of

  crayons il ustrating his science lesson: ROY G BIV. Every color sharply

  divided fr
om the next, and the whole arc blazing against a perfectly blue

  sky.

  “Did it rain and I missed it?” I asked Sonja.

  She laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  Colton was down the hal in the playroom. “Hey, Colton,” I cal ed. “Come