Thinking about Heaven

I consider myself blessed and privileged to personally have known and interacted during my lifetime with people from countries, other than my own, America.  At the age of eleven, my family moved to Tokyo, Japan as missionaries, and we lived there for ten years.  I attended the American School in Japan until I graduated from high school.  It is an international English-speaking school and my friends were literally from around the world.  My classmates’ parents were ambassadors, embassy personnel, foreign businessmen and women.  Beside that, my family lived among the Japanese people and embraced the Japanese way of life.  We learned the Japanese language and ate Japanese food (which we still enjoy today).  Happily, these many years later, I’m still in contact with several Japanese friends, including a Japanese “son” that lived in Ohio with my family as an exchange student and who still calls me “Mom”.

I have vacationed through the years in Jamaica, England, Scotland, Wales and Israel.  Each place has unique and delightful people, customs, language, and food.  Some of my dearest friends, Ben and his family, are from Cameroon, Africa.  I met Ben several years ago when he worked as a caregiver in the nursing home where my Dad lived.  He was a compassionate, loving worker who was also trying to save enough money to bring his family to America, too.  My small group met him and we helped him with that goal so now his wife and children live here, as well.  What a blessing for us all!

Just these few experiences with people from other countries have given me a small idea of what Heaven will be like one day.  Revelation 7:9, 12 says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.  They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.  And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, Who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’  …And they fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying ‘Amen!  Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’

This heavenly picture makes me so excited to think that every knee will bow to God one day and every voice will confess that He is Lord Almighty.  Peace will reign and sin will be no more.  All men will praise God for all eternity!

The Newsboys have a great song, “He Reigns”, which brings to mind a great picture of what this day will be.  Praise Him!  I pray that you, dear reader, will be in this multitude of believers!

”It’s the song of the redeemed
Rising from the African plain
It’s the song of the forgiven
Drowning out the Amazon rain

The song of Asian believers
filled with God’s holy fire
It’s every tribe, every tongue, every nation
A love song born of a grateful choir

It’s all God’s children singin’
“Glory, glory, hallelujah”
“He reigns, He reigns”
It’s all God’s children singin’
“Glory, glory, hallelujah”
“He reigns, He reigns”