Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: fiction

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 6

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 6

    I swallowed hard and looked away as a tear came to my eye.

    Of course, I thought, maybe that’s her mommy in the casket. I had not had time for thought of all of the family connections of my lost loved one.

    Friends…dear and rare friends… become just like family. We don’t really know them. They have husbands, wives, kids, moms, grandpas, and all the rest.

    “We never really knew him,” I had just heard someone say either of the living relative or another family member who had died.

    That’s right. We don’t really know them, do we?

    So when the little girl said of a bright star on a picture of Heaven: “That one’s my Mommy,” I had not expected it.

    “She’s not REALLY brighter than the other stars…” the little girl said, as I gathered my emotions and attention back into the room. “My mommy’s star is just brighter for me so that I can always see that she is still there.”

    I thought about it. And I thought of this little motherless child, who now would no longer have the nurturing embrace of her mother for all of those moments in life when you really need a hug.

    (I think another tear started from one eye.)

    Then she asked me another question about which I had no idea.

    —

    Do you know anybody in Heaven?

    Wow. I looked nervously about…

    “I don’t know.”

    I quickly tried to steer our conversation back into the stuff of crayons on paper. “Can we see in your picture?”

    “I don’t know,” she replied, “We’ll have to look.”

    We both examined her drawing a little more.

    “What do YOU see?” she asked as she nuzzled up to me.

    (A professional psychologist could not have asked a better question with a Rorschach ink picture.)

    I stared into her picture of Heaven…

    —

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 5

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 5

    [In case you are joining our serial short story about grief a little late, here is a link to the beginning.]

    “Do you see all those stars,” the little girl asked? “There are more of them in heaven than sand on the beach. Know how I know?”

    I nodded that I didn’t and her dad looked our way in interest (for he too had been silent all along).

    The little girl continued: “God told Abraham,

    “You’ll have more kids than the sand on the beach or the stars in the sky.” [Gen.22:17]

    “Well, that was a long time ago and there’s lots more stars in heaven now.”

    I smiled and nodded confirmation of the little girl’s encouragement.

    I was thinking about the lifeless fluid-filled corpse in the casket. It wasn’t very encouraging. The scene was as frightening to me, truth-be-told, as the wax-carved bodies at Ripley’s.

    Another image quickly came to mind. If zombies could be real as dancers in a music video, then the next room would be as fearsome as death.

    I glanced ever-so-briefly toward the adjacent doors, through which I had fled into this vestibule.

    As I looked back to the girl and her picture I asked, “Why is that star so much brighter?”

    (I had not considered the impact of her matter-of-fact answer.)

    “THAT one’s my Mommy.”

  • A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 4

    A Picture of Heaven – Chapter 4

    When we were children, all of us remember “visiting” some favorite great grandpa, or grandma, or aunt or cousin…

    (The connections of the generations do keep getting closer, don’t they?)

    … and we had to file past an open coffin with a corpse, all the time thinking things like, ‘Grandpa never wore a suit,’ or ‘She never wore that much make-up,’ and thoughts of distraction like that.

    ‘Barbaric!’ I thought. ‘Why would any civilized people do this?’

    ‘I know… I’m going to put in my will that if you have an open coffin “viewing” of me, I’ll come back and haunt you!’

    Well, that was yesterday; but one other thing I noticed, as I attempted refusal to look at the dead corpse as I dutifully filed by the coffin: a little girl.

    She was sitting with a man in another room (probably her daddy), and she was coloring with crayons.

    So when I surveyed the scene for a place of escape (though there seemed no escape from this gloomy place), I walked toward the child, looking for a lost glimpse of joy.

    —

    I glanced toward saddened, tear-filled eyes of her father and stooped down to the child.

    “What’cha drawing?’ I asked.”

    The little girl looked up into my eyes. “Heaven.” Then she looked back to her paper and continued to color.

    I studied her picture and looked at her father, then back to her drawing.

    “How do you know there’s a Heaven?” I inquired of her (out of the clear blue sky)?

    Then her loving little eyes looked up toward me and her meek little voice boldly proclaimed:

    “IF there wasn’t a Heaven, I COULDN’T DRAW IT.”

    Silence… (I had not expected this.) I felt ‘a sadder eyes’ of others gazing our way. The little girl didn’t go back to her drawing, either, as if she was expecting my reply.

    (But I didn’t know what to say to this little girl, sitting beside her daddy with tears in his eyes.)

    “I better tell you about it,” she said.

    “I WAS THERE! And I see you don’t understand Heaven from my picture.”

    I gave no answer to her childish innocence saying, “I was there.” But she was right: I didn’t understand it.

    —