What's Heaven Like?

"What's heaven like?" Little One asked me yesterday.

We had a lot of deep discussions, me and the six-year-old, on our errand run. Everything from the differences between Judaism and Christianity to how recycled paper is made to who me and mommy are voting for the next presidential election.

So how to you explain heaven to a second-grader?

To paraphrase, I said something along the lines of, "No one knows exactly what heaven will be like, but we are promised that it will be better than anything we can ever imagine. I mean, think of the best possible thing you can do, or think of the best possible place you can be, well, heaven will be infinitely more better than that."

I glance in the rear-view mirror and meet her eyes.

"I think it will be like a birthday party that never ends," she says with a smile.

"Perfect!" I am impressed. "Excellent! That's exactly what I'm talking about. I think for many little boys and girls who go to heaven before they get old and become adults, I think that heaven is exactly like that for them."

"What would heaven be like for you, Daddy?"

Hmmm. "You know how I like to read? You know how we're on our way to our second library today?" Nods in the back seat. "Well, I guess, for me, heaven would be like a giant library. An infinitely large library, with every book ever written or every book that is yet to be written, every book that was lost and every book that was imagined. And I would have some superability to read any book I wanted to in one second, though it would feel I lived through it entirely. Understand?"

Again she nods. I think a little more as we're driving down back roads and stopping for traffic lights.

Heaven would also contain every world ever though up. All those science fiction books I read - well, the worlds those writers crafted would actually exist, and I could visit them. The authors, too, they'd be at my disposal, and oh what bull sessions we'd have. (Because in heaven, I'd have no problem speaking my mind to anyone.) Even the two worlds I created in my two novels would exist, physically, really exist, like Hugh Everett parallel-worlds exist, and I'd be able to step over that line in the sand and enter them as casually as I would leave the front door to go to work tomorrow morning.

But most of all, I think, the visions in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, would become really truly real. Fleshed out. Gain physical existence and ontological meaning. John's final book would be like Cliff Notes of Cliff Notes compared to what we'd see and feel and hear and experience.

How's that for trying to put into words something we will never know this side of eternity?

What a great time I have every Saturday during these errands!