Heaven

Glimpsing Heaven is a secular book, written by an agnostic/atheist who did not believe in God or Heaven when she set out to interview people who have come back from medical death with tales of heaven-like experiences.

There are a lot of accounts in this book that look nothing like a Christian idea of heaven, but there are also many that do. I don't think all Christians will enjoy it but I found this book so fascinating and so comforting.

For one thing, I once read in Kara Tippets' book The Hardest Peace an explanation of some of Jesus' words which explained that we will not be married in Heaven. This haunted me for years! It was so painful for me to imagine that a place could even be called Heaven if I was not allowed to be Ryan's wife or my children's mom while I was there. It was so soul crushing for me to imagine. I just couldn't wrap my head around it. But so many people in this book talked about seeing loved ones who had passed. That was such a comfort to me, although I have to say that I really felt after a very intense and tear-filled prayer time not long ago that God was telling me I would still be Ryan's wife. This just felt like a little nudge from God saying, See? You'll still be with the ones you love!

But there's something else. Do you remember when I wrote about the little boy in Heaven is for Real saying he saw colors we have never even seen? I compared the way color blind people are so shocked and awed by color when they see it for the first time with the idea of what we might feel if we get to heaven and see colors we have never seen. One woman in the Glimpsing Heaven, Jayne Smith, said this about her experience...

"I don't remember seeing the sun, but the brightness was beautiful. And the colors-- oh, extraordinary! The sky was vivid blue. I looked all around and there were flowers, flowering bushes. I realized I was seeing colors I had never seen before-- along with colors I had seen before: red, orange, purple, blue."

The things I would miss if I wasn't a reader! 📚🤗