Here's something I think about a lot.
I'm no longer interested in who makes it to heaven or who doesn't based on what people believe or what they don't. I trust God will take care of those things. And being a Jesus follower is so very much more than an intellectual ascent to a set of doctrines. It is about living each and every day of our lives as Jesus would have us do such.
But what I do care about in regard to the afterlife involves an 11 year old boy who was recently dragged from his family's tent by a bear and killed. Is there justice for him? Will he experience some kind of continuing life? Or is that it? I pray that that is not it. I pray that it is not true that it is just the way it is that some folks live a long and good life and some just die young due to random chance, and then there is nothing beyond for them. I hope that God makes it right in the end for that boy and for so very many more. This is what I hope an emerging Jesus follower might care about.
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We are mortal, and so we can't help thinking about our mortality.
I thought about this alot when Carrie's father died. Just based on what I knew about Bill, I wouldn't have described him as a devout Christian. During his funeral, the priest said a lot of things about Bill that, to my estimation, didn't seem true. I felt like the priest was just saying things that we wanted to here. So I asked myself, was Bill going to heaven?
Bill was a rough man who worked hard to support his family. He was fired from a job because he refused to fire another man who didn't deserve it, just to make room for someone's relative. Both men lost their jobs that day, and some would say that Bill did a stupid thing that proved nothing. I think he showed incredible integrity that day.
Bill would give you the shirt off his back, if you asked for it. Sometimes people took advantage of Bill's generosity, but he never became cynical or stopped helping people.
Four hundred people came to the funeral home. Some of them were people who worked for Bill at his feed store. They were people who might not have been hired somewhere else because of the way they dressed or talked, or because of their lack of education. Bill didn't care about any of that. All he needed was someone with a strong back who showed up for work, and a lot of the people who worked for Bill were grateful to him because he gave them a job when they really needed it. And they thought so much of him that the came to the funeral home.
So again I ask myself, is Bill in heaven? I think he is.
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