Talk of JESUS .com

Category: A Picture of Heaven

a picture of heaven - Fiction - a serial short story about grief
by Roger Harned
https://talkofJesus.com

A Picture of Heaven is about grief – a serial short story about death and eternal life as told by a man looking at a picture at a funeral drawn by a little girl. a fictional story about death fiction, heaven, grieving family and friends eternal life, as seen through the eyes of a child’s hope. – This first episodic short story on http://talkofJesus.com will begin on Monday, 2 September, 2013 with the prologue and continue through 14 episodes on Monday – Friday. (Of course you can always go back into the archive to read an episode you missed.
Stay tuned. PLEASE comment on the individual episodes with your thoughts, impressions, and witness. You may even have a witness of your own to SHARE WITH OUR READERS, who we pray will pass along our Christian Witness to their Social networks of ‘friends.’ Tune in EACH day, Monday – Friday. – Roger Harned

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 11

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 11

    (For those of you who missed our last episode, these are the roaming thoughts of a man at a funeral.)

    QUOTES from: “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” Paris Reidhead, (1919-1992) Sermon on Judges 17, c.1945-47

    For a long time, I had thought about the missionary’s words, yet hadn’t thought of it again until now.  I had decided that I guess everybody knows about heaven, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to go there either.

    It’s not that I loved my sin… well, some of it… but heaven and hell didn’t seem real enough.

    I didn’t really get the picture of Heaven and I could not bear to even imagine any vision of hell.

    Then I thought about the corpse of my friend in the casket and had some comfort about the upcoming burial, instead of a cremation.

    And something else that missionary had said captured my mind, as I once again stared out on the cross and took in the sad music.

    * “Yes, will not the judge of all the earth do right? The heathen are lost and they are going to go to hell not because they haven’t heard the gospel.

    *They are going to go to hell because they are sinners who love their sin and because they deserve hell… I didn’t send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen.”

    *“I sent you to Africa for my sake. They deserved hell, but I love them…

    And I endured the agonies of hell for them. I didn’t send you out there for them. I sent you out there for me.

    Do I not deserve the reward of my sufferings? Don’t I deserve those for whom I died?”

    —

     I thought about “Amazing Grace.”

    Hadn’t I heard that he was once captain of a slave ship?

    “A wretch like me,” “a wretch like me,” kept ringing in my head.

    I once was lost

    But now am found

    Was blind,

    But now I see.

    —

     

     

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 10

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 10

    As I sat there in the church staring at the CROSS up front.

    I thought about a recent broadcast about Heaven from a world-famous MEGA-Church, led by a christian couple, well known and followed by christians on their trips for Jesus throughout the world.

    (I don’t remember a cross in their church, just a big dove.)

    They promoted their books and ‘mission trips,’ telling how we could have a Heaven we deserve, NOW. Just buy their books and follow the steps and join them, or send money to them to help the poor in these poor non-christian countries.

    The Pastor in the tycoon’s best suit seemed to be constantly smiling, as he preached a sermon in which he seemed to say * ‘that the end of all being is the happiness of man,’ just like in my philosophy class; except he used a lot of evangelical terms and biblical doctrine which seemed to say about Heaven

    • *“God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man.
    • We can have our best life NOW with Jesus.

    *Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man.

    All the angels exist in the…everything is for the happiness of man.”

    (They sure can quote scripture… but could they take up their cross? …)

    —

    [QUOTES from: “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” Paris Reidhead, (1919-1992) Sermon on Judges 17, c.1945-47]

    —

    One other time, a friend insisted that I had to hear a missionary just returned from Africa.

    I agreed, thinking of pictures from National Geographic and Albert Schweitzer.

    *The missionary had actually met this famous man and told a couple of stories about shooting crocodiles for sport; but how later this famous man in Africa, not only wouldn’t kill a nest of cockroaches inside his organ at home, but refused sterilization in surgery so he wouldn’t kill living bacteria. (The missionary called it ‘the dirtiest hospital in Africa.) Then he said how the philanthropic doctor hated any suggestion of being called a christian.

    On the other hand, this missionary had gone to Africa to tell them about heaven, but in that he also became disillusioned. He witnessed:

    *“I had seen pictures of lepers. I had seen pictures of ulcers. I had seen pictures of native funerals and I didn’t want my fellow human beings to suffer in hell eternally after such a miserable existence on earth.”

    *“And when I got to Africa I discovered that they weren’t poor ignorant little heathen running around in the woods waiting for…looking for someone to tell them how to go to heaven, that they were monsters of iniquity that were living in utter and total defiance of far more knowledge of God than I ever dreamed they had… When I got there I found they knew about heaven and didn’t want to go there and that they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it.”

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 9

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 9

    The born again crowds all seem to have a plan for our salvation and confident assurance of a place in Heaven… I just don’t see it in most of their lives.

    I see people who talk about Jesus and Heaven differently in different places. I don’t even think that they understand the salvation they preach.

    Some are always happy to be alive and can’t wait for Heaven. Some are sorry to be alive and can’t wait for Heaven.

    Some celebrate as if Heaven can be claimed on earth.

    (I doubt that they are really looking forward to failing health and open caskets as part of our Heaven on earth.)

    And I have met just a few who talk about Heaven as if they live there, instead of here. They seem to be here though, as if it had something to do with Jesus.

    Somehow all of these pictures of Jesus didn’t paint a clear picture for me. But yesterday, a little girl seemed to have a simple answer. in a clear picture, of some things of Heaven I had been ignoring for a long time.

    Our serial story on Grief, salvation, and being born again from death to eternal life in heaven will resume NEXT Monday.

    In case you missed an earlier episode, here is a link to the beginning of our story.