In the Clouds

Perhaps death is a little like taking off in an airplane. 

As your earthly body begins to lose grasp, you worry that you’ll fall, but you don’t. You are lifted. Carried. You start to feel weightless. 

As you get further and further from your earthly life, you begin to see with stark clarity all that you’ve been, all you’ve done, all that happened to you. The full shape of your life in all its ragged edges. 

And you worry that clarity will overwhelm you with darkness, fear, condemnation, but it doesn’t. Instead you’re blasted into clear white, going up and up and up and all around you is purity. Bright, pulsating purity and softness. 

And then you see it. Bouncy arctic hills, puffball archipelagos, lakes filled with sky. A new world. 

And where you land is perfectly calm. Still, peaceful, beautiful, but unlike the alien world above the cloud layer, it’s not empty. It’s full of friendly eyes anticipating your arrival, quick to become fast friends and family. And their eyes don’t put you on edge. Behind them is only safety. 

Some eyes you haven’t seen in decades - the same ones you secretly worried you’d never see again. But they’re here too. Safe with you. 

And the feeling of their embrace makes up for a thousand deaths you had to face. And the life behind their eyes makes you forget the chill of their skin, the stillness of their mind. Now they are so alive. 

And lighting it all, this beautiful world you’ve inherited as your own, the One whose love was always carrying you along. You realise now, in the thickness of his presence, how he was always there, softening the edges, dulling the sharpness, worming between you and fear’s grip so you weren’t consumed even though you surely thought you were. 

But no. Here, in His presence, it’s so clear to you now. You only wish you could show those on the other side. But you know He is there too. Even if not in the fullness you see now, he is there, a soft breeze, and it’s enough to intoxicate those who can feel.  

Even his shadow is beautiful enough to give yourself to. Even his whisper, enough to change the course of your life. But there are no whispers here. His glory is a shout, his presence is a dance, and there is no distance at all. You can run straight into him and never leave. You can rest on his chest forever. You can burrow inside and find infinite trails to explore. There are no limits to the facets of his person. 

And those moments on earth, the ones where you felt weightless, without fear, close to Jesus, hopeful, present, joyful, united, connected, playful. They are not moments now. They are not a foreign place you wish you’d booked one more night in. They are not foreign at all. They are embracing you, strangely familiar, harmonising with all your great needs. And no anxiety or hunger inside can snuff out its power. Your thoughts can’t shift to scary things now. There is nothing to break you out of the moment. 

Heaven is here, and fear is finished.