En la Casa de Dios

Me with Josue, Paola, and Carlos

What's your view of heaven like? Maybe you imagine the streets of gold and big pearly gates. Maybe you dream of floating around on a cloud or just constantly worshipping God. Perhaps you haven't thought about it much or don't believe in heaven.

If you're like me, you've thought about it a lot. I had it all planned out: what exactly my mansion would look like, how many rooms it would have, where the swimming pool would be, and whether I would spend more time skiing or surfing or just hanging out with friends under the palm trees (all of which, of course, would be out my back door). And if I did need to go anywhere, there'd be a limo parked out front, of course. After all, I've worked hard here on earth, so I'll deserve it. (right?)

Okay, this isn't heaven. But it's a nice view from outside our door here in Tegus.

I had it all planned out, until God intervened and messed some things up. Sometime in the past few weeks, it dawned on me that maybe that's not how everybody thinks about heaven. Maybe heaven is not just about getting everything we thought we ever wanted; maybe it's about enjoying the constant presence of our heavenly father and getting to spend time with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I wondered how much my view of heaven had been influenced by the materialism of our Western culture, and I was curious whether a person who had grown up in humble circumstances around the Tegucigalpa city dump would have different ideas than me.

So the other day in class, I decided to try out my idea with Josue and Paola. Instead of drawing a picture of their favorite animal or what they like to do when it's sunny outside, I asked them to draw a picture of what they thought heaven would be like. I didn't expect them to draw Ferraris or anything, but I thought maybe they would draw their family or something like that.

Instead, I was surprised to see each of them put a small house at the center of their papers with a brightly colored sky in the background.

"What's that that you drew?" I asked.

"A house," Paola replied.

"Whose house is it?"

"God's."

"Oh. And what do people do at God's house?"

"They play with God."

It brought a smile to my face as I considered heaven from the viewpoint of a six-year-old from Honduras. Heaven wasn't about what we're going to get out of the deal. It was about hanging out with God.

As another thought, I'm not sure if heaven will have electricity or not, but AFE sure does! Check out the light in our classroom that finally got hooked up (and our spontaneous photo shoot following):

Light!

I told Carlos to wait until the photo took (it was on a timer), but I guess he didn't grasp the concept.