Therefore when our body is no longer able to perform its functions in the natural world but is separated from our spirit, which is called dying, we still continue to be ourselves and to live. We ourselves live, because we live not from the body but from the spirit, because it is the spirit which thinks and loves in us, and thought together with affection makes us what we are. Thus it is clear that when we die we only pass from the consciousness of one world to that of another. 

When this happens, we take with us everything that makes us a person, except our earthly body, which is laid aside because it is of no further use to us. We are there clothed in a body similar in appearance to the one we left behind, but with a difference in quality. It is now a spiritual body fully attuned to its new spiritual environment. As the Apostle Paul said, "There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body; the one is put off and the other is put on." Because we remain essentially the same person we are immediately recognized by those who have gone on before us and, in turn, we know them and rejoice in their company. There, as here, we relate to one another according to the depth and reality of our love and friendship. 

Let all know and remember that everyone is born for heaven, and they are received into heaven who receive heaven in themselves while in this world. As our Lord Jesus said, "Behold, the kingdom of heaven is within you." This may be hard to understand when we have been conditioned by centuries of religious teaching to think that God selects only a few chosen people and the rest are left out. However, it is not hard to understand once you accept the idea that God's whole purpose for creating human life was to form a heaven of angels from the human race. In giving us the capacity and the means to obtain heaven in our lives, He has given us all the equal opportunity to enter heaven. There is no "privileged few." We all have the right stuff, not just those who happened to be born into the "right circumstances." Everyone is born for heaven, and those who truly desire it shall have it. The love and truth of God is here for everyone if we choose to avail ourselves of it and live according to it. 

Jesus told us that the way to this heavenly life is not difficult. He said, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Simply "Love one another and love God." I mention this because when someone who is close to us dies, we know that their life has not been simple, nor always easy. It is far more likely to have been complex and complicated with countless highs and lows. We know, that in every life, there have been times of joy and times of sorrow; times of love and times of anger; times of tenderness and times of hardness; times of uncertainty and times of sureness; times of confusion and frustration and times of clarity and deliberateness; times of self-interest and times of loving compassion for others. We wonder how, in all the busyness of our life are we to find the time or the way to let heaven into it. But the way is "easy" as Jesus promised, for each time we acknowledge God we open a channel for His love and wisdom to flow in and each time we experience the sharing of love and truth, be it with parents or children or friends or strangers, we are also experiencing and allowing heaven to flow in and become a part of our spirit. Every loving, kind, compassionate, unselfish act and thought we experience is one more incident of receiving heaven into our life. 

The Lord does not expect us to do or to be more than what we are capable of doing or being, given the various circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the abilities we have to cope with them. When we pass into eternal life we are not judged by the worst we have been, but rather by the best because that is the standard we have established for ourselves. The Lord wants us to be there with Him, and He is not a God of wrath and damnation and punishment but is a God of love who works with resurrection and reward and ongoing life. Spiritually we are what we love and what we understand to be right and these are the aspects of character and humanity that we take with us into our spiritual life. 

I would like to close with one last idea which is that: those who are in heaven continually advance toward the springtime of life, and the longer they live in that spiritual world, to a spring so much more delightful and happy; and this to eternity, according to their degree of love and neighborly charity. Goodness makes in them a likeness of itself, and causes the delightful and beautiful things of love and charity to shine forth from their faces. In a word to grow old in heaven is to grow young. Amen.

(Much of what is contained herein is taken from the Order of Service for Resurrection Services in our Book of Worship.)

Music is: On a Distant Shore
© 2001 Bruce DeBoer and is
used with permission