Opus 2026-257: God’s Coffee Shop

As I get older I find myself speculating on what eternity will be like.  One of the things that I keep reminding myself it is going to be much better than what is going on now, as good as that is.  My life is incredibly blessed.  This week I have had grandchildren sneaking into the room to wake me up from my nap and then jump on my lap.  I have been inflated a pool for them and watched them cavorting in the water.  I’ve had breakfast with my son.  I’ve gone to dinner with friends at church.  I found things to argue about at the church Bible study.  I watched the sunrise.  I’ve swatted mosquitoes.  It has been a rich and varied week.

But as I get older, I think of what’s going to happen when I finally cross that great divide.  It occurred to me that the world will go on without me.  I thought about how the United States continued when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  People still went to work, had babies, built houses, and all the other things that go with life.  When I’m gone, the sun will still come up, and the breeze will still blow.  The sad part of it is that I think about how I can’t have my grandchildren wake me up anymore.  My assurance is that God has something so much better that I can’t even comprehend it.

As my mind rambled, I thought about sitting in a coffee shop in heaven and having an old friend come in and sit down across from me.  What would we talk about?  Politics certainly wouldn’t be of interest.  By that time, our theological differences would be nothing but laughing matters.  What in the world would we talk about?

The thought came that perhaps when you ordered your coffee and pastry that you couldn’t have when you were a diabetic on earth that you could look up at the board and see the question for the day.  Maybe it will be like fortune cookies with a topic inside.  What would that question be?  I would tell you, but you wouldn’t be able to understand it.  One reason you couldn’t understand it is because at this point in life, I wouldn’t be able to understand it.  Rest assured, though that it would be a scintillating and provocative topic.

You don’t like coffee?  Perhaps an eternity that fault will be removed.  If it is too stubborn, then there will be cranberry juice available and possibly even chai.  I shutter at the thought now.  Then it won’t bother me at all.

We were created in the image of God and that gives us the ability to use our imaginations and create things that don’t exist, but we would like to.  Consider that in eternity God may get real joy out of providing us deep in meaningful insights and experiences that we could not even begin to put our arms around in this life.

The anticipation is great.

homo unius libri