In our Sunday morning Bible class we have been talking about the occupation of the heavenly host.  The host of heaven is occupied with praise. This praise is done together. Revelation 4 -5 make this clear. Also clear is that the host of heaven is happy…no – ecstatic.  We want to join that ecstatic throng. We sing “When We All Get to Heaven,” “When All of God’s Singers get Home,” and “Heaven Holds All to Me.” We look forward to exactly this moment – when all of us, together, sing praise to God, gathered around His throne forever.

            And yet in my 35 years of ministry I have spoken to countless brothers, and even a few sisters who claim to dislike hymn-singing. Many even go so far as saying they dislike any music. This is beyond my comprehension. How could anyone not enjoy singing hymns? I would forego getting my 32 inch-waist, and my full head of hair back a hundred times if I could enjoy the full strength of my voice again. One of the great things about heaven, to me, is that we will “sing and never get tired” just like the old spiritual promises.  How can one look forward to heaven if one dislikes hymn-singing?

            That second salient feature of the description of Heaven - that we are always all together – is a little tougher for me. I’m not fond of crowds. Heaven is clearly a crowd. I like alone time. Heaven promises none of it. I am used to a healthy margin of personal space – something Heaven seems not to offer. And so I must ask myself: “okay, Mister Prickly Pear, if you can’t abide being a bee in a hive, how can you look forward to heaven.”

            The answer is simple. The glory we will experience together, around God’s very Person, cannot be compared to any human experience here on Earth (Romans 8.18). One may not like hymn-singing here, but nothing here will be as blissful as singing there. One may despise being crowded and jostled here, but nothing here will be as satisfying as being together there.

            Our brains struggle to visualize the descriptions John gives in Revelation 4-5, and 21-22. John is reduced to describing shapes and colors – arcs and cubes, greens and golds and reds. But the effect of glory and exhilaration is achieved by the limited tools of human language. Heaven radiates off the pages of scripture. We know it is a place of no pain, no regret, no emotional baggage, no loneliness, no longing, no deprivation, no parting. It is the place where God makes everything new.

            And so whether we love hymn-singing or dislike music altogether, whether we love the excitement of the crowd or prefer solitude, we look forward to heaven anyway. Heaven is the place we belong. It is the place made for us (Matthew 25.34, Philippians 3.20). Here we are aliens and strangers (I Peter 1.1).  This displacement, this refugee life is stressful and creates in us a longing for home (II Corinthians 5.1-10).

            Heaven is where we belong. Nothing else matters. We may not be able to imagine enjoying an eternity without chocolate, or golf, or caffeine, or football, or a thousand other things. But our anemic imaginations cannot dim our longing for home, or our conviction that Heaven will exceed all expectations.