Heaven
Christians who never think about Heaven are said to have the three cardinal virtues of Faith, Cope and Love because they are Christian only for what it does for them in this life!
Jesus continually encourages investing our time, talent and treasure in Heaven, yet we often neglect it. So, this page encourages us to bring in the benefits and perspective of Heaven while on Earth.
II. Heaven Doesn't Reflect Earth—Earth Reflects Heaven
We tend to think that all the good things on Earth will exist in Heaven only in some shadowy, vague, weakened, diluted way.
The Biblical view of Heaven is that every good thing we experience on Earth will exist in Heaven in a higher, perfected way.
For example, after death we won’t exist in a fog of white light or float on a cloud as a disembodied soul.
Each of God's own will have a glorified physical body, just as Jesus has a resurrected, glorified body. "Our bodies now are a mere shadow or prophetic hint of a more solid resurrection body that we will receive later, the Artist’s preliminary sketch of His later masterpiece," says Peter Kreeft.
This is a key reason why we don’t spend time thinking about Heaven more—we have the wrong image. Kreeft:
One reason we have lost our love for Heaven is because we have lost the sense of Heavenly glory. Biblical imagery of jewels, stars, candles, trumpets, and angels no longer fits our ranch-style, supermarket world. Pathetic modern substitutes of fluffy clouds, sexless cherubs, harps and metal halos… simply do not move us... In medieval Christendom, it was the world beyond this world that made all the difference in the world to this world… Earth was Heaven’s womb, Heaven’s dress rehearsal. Heaven was the meaning of the Earth.
The Bible is filled with analogies describing Earth as a reflection of Heaven. Paul says that on Earth we see God in a dirty mirror, but says that we who are with Christ will see Him face-to-face. CS Lewis called Earth the Shadowlands of a great city over the horizon. (The 1993 Shadowlands film doesn't bring this out as well as the 1963 BBC version.)
The picture the Bible paints of Heaven is organic! It describes Heaven as lush fields of green, with lions and lambs in peace (much like a return to the Garden of Eden), with cities having streets of gold, etc. (In the Christian fellowship I attend we like to think of our group as one "neighborhood in the New Jerusalem.") We don’t have to take our metaphors about Heaven literally, but we do have to take them seriously, because they point to something more, not less, than the images they connote.
Earthly physical gifts, and pleasures and passions exist in Heaven where they are perfected, heightened and ordered.
Kreeft: To think of the love that made the world, the love that became human, suffered alienation from itself and died to save us rebels, the love that gleams though the fanatic joy of Jesus’ obedience to the will of His Father and that shines in the eyes and lives of the saints—to think of this love as any less passionate than our temporary and conditioned passions ’is a most disastrous fantasy.’" And that consuming fire of love is our destined Husband, according to His own promise.
Sex in Heaven? Oh yes, and no pale, abstract, merely mental shadow of it either. Earthly sex is the shadow, and our lives are a process of thickening so that we can share in the substance, …so that we can endure and rejoice in the Heavenly fire.
Conclusion
Let’s pray for greater excitement about Heaven! Let’s be Christians of Faith, Hope and Love. In fact, our lives should not make sense without the hope of Heaven. Someone should be able to point to us and say "that person sacrifices things in this life because of rewards Jesus promises in the next."
Heaven is coming. It is nearer now than when you began this article.
http://www.davenevins.com/loveofgod/topics/heaven.htm