July 26, 2010

What is heaven? It is our one true home. It is our eternal destiny in Christ. It is being in Christ. It is being like Christ. It is a destiny that our lives here and now are preparing us for.

A woman was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctors told her that she had three months to live. She called her pastor and said, “Please come over. I want to put things in order.” He came over, and they sat down and they planned her funeral. She tidied up all of the loose ends. He promised her that he would make sure that all of her wishes were carried out.

Everything was now in order, and he got up to leave. She stopped him before he walked out the door and she said, “I forgot. Two more things that are very important. When I am buried, I want to be buried with my favorite Bible in the casket with me.” The pastor said, “No problem.”

And then she said, “The second thing is also very important. I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.” The pastor was kind of stunned. He did not know what to say. And then she said, “All my life I have gone to so many church potluck suppers; and when the main course was over and they came to clear the table, inevitably someone would lean over and say to me, ‘Keep your fork.’ That was my favorite part of the meal. I knew there was something better coming. It might be a velvety chocolate cake; it might be a deep dish apple pie. I knew it would be wonderful, and that it would be of substance.”

And she said, “I want to be laid out in my casket at the viewing with a fork in my right hand because I want people to come by and look and wonder, “What is with the fork?” And then pastor, you will have the opportunity to tell them, “Keep your fork because the best is yet to come.”

And sure enough, she was laid out in the casket with her best dress, her favorite Bible, and a fork in her right hand. At the viewing people came by. The pastor overheard countless of them asking the question, “What’s with the fork?” And then at the funeral he was able to preach, “Keep the fork. The best is yet to come.”

This afternoon when you sit down to lunch, this evening at dinnertime when you pick up that fork, may it be an oh so gentle reminder to you, that in Christ, with Christ, like Christ, the best is yet to come. That is what heaven is all about.

Grace and Peace,
Beverly