Heaven Isn’t A Place On Earth

This week our family boarded a plane to head home to Ireland after some weeks in America. The airports along the way were full of holiday-makers going this way or that, some just setting out, others returning sporting deeper tans and new sunglasses. Eventually, whenever they all get to wherever it is they call home, they’ll be met by a welcome party of work, school, and responsibilities that have been patiently awaiting them. As the tan lines fade and sunglasses collect dust, the desktop background picture of big smiles in the sand may seem increasingly like a taunt. Or maybe like an impossible invitation: “If only I could live there all the time, I would always be that happy!” The invitation seems to be proven more and more with every holiday.

But the invitation is a lie. The holiday-makers going both directions on our airplane are proof: if one side of the ocean was the perfection of bliss, why would they feel the need to take their holidays on the other? If we actually did follow the invitation and move ourselves permanently to the dreamiest beach on google images, what would we find there? More sunshine, more sand, and more people who are not so very different to the people we left behind. We would also find more bills and to-do lists, grocery shopping, schools, and government tax offices – all remarkably similar to the places we know, once you get behind the regional architecture. Now, I’m not saying that every place is exactly the same. There are significant differences between life in North Korea and life in Kansas. But good citizens of Kansas, with all their Wal-marts and BBQs, still feel the need to take holidays in the Caribbean. And people in the Caribbean still take their children to Disney World in Florida. And I know a former Disney Princess who took a holiday in China.

God himself was the first to take a holiday when he rested on the seventh day after creating the cosmos. In doing this, he set the pattern that those made in his image are not invented to be constantly running work machines. In the Bible, Hebrews 4 tells us that God also uses these days of rest to point us beyond this broken world to the ultimate rest won for God’s adopted children through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Until then, the kind of rest we’re longing for can only be found in tantalizing tasters. Belinda Carlisle may sing about how “heaven is a place on earth”, but good luck trying to find it. There is no secret corner of this world where life is always good, people are always kind, bugs never bite, and governments are always benevolent. We get just enough to dream of it, but never enough to be satisfied. The whole planet is broken. All the holidays in the calendar can’t change that. And yet, for those who put their trust in Christ, holidays can point our eyes forward to his promises: This life may be a work week full of frustration and pain, but Sunday is coming!