Your First Experience of Memories in Heaven
Video lyrics crafted by Soren Iverson.
I wrote this for my dad a couple of years ago. He passed away in December 2017...I wonder if his experience was anything like it.
Memories
Soul, I think when you first get to heaven you’ll draw the deepest breath of relief your new lungs can manage. Somehow your body will know that the dangers of loss and inadequacy that haunted your old life, kept your breathing shallow and heart racing have
vanished
dissolved
vaporized
faded like a flame in a closed jar
After soaking deeply in this nothing-to-fix spa of contentment, your natural curiosity will entice you down tendrils of exploration, hints of explanation.
Why am I content?
Each memory you tried to keep from slipping out of reach is now standing – solid. Available. Concrete. Re-experiencable in all its fullness of people, shapes, smells, story, tangibility, graspability. School friends, motor scooters, combines, crunching snow, aunts and uncles and cousins and parishioners and parents and grandparents – voices, accents, clothes, machines, smells, mountaintops…every scene and character and era of your story sits ready for you to relive and share.
It’s not going anywhere, surviving only by the connection of a twisted, tearing, tottering twine to
flitting memories
decaying objects
fading photographs
Then I think you’ll get a glimmer of the things you now have eternity to make. Sports cars, perpetual motion machines, toys, puzzles, intricately designed clocks and music boxes and musical instruments and sermons and musicals…
Your practical, logical, artistic gifts will flourish.
All the projects you’ve imagined but couldn’t complete because of limits of time and resources on this earth… you’ll have eternity to work on.
And all this is barely a beginning.
You’ll know beyond any doubt that
God loves no one more than you
You reflect God’s image no less than anyone else
There’s no social ladder compelling you to climb
God says, “You’re all right. Enjoy.”
vanished
dissolved
vaporized
faded like a flame in a closed jar
After soaking deeply in this nothing-to-fix spa of contentment, your natural curiosity will entice you down tendrils of exploration, hints of explanation.
Why am I content?
Each memory you tried to keep from slipping out of reach is now standing – solid. Available. Concrete. Re-experiencable in all its fullness of people, shapes, smells, story, tangibility, graspability. School friends, motor scooters, combines, crunching snow, aunts and uncles and cousins and parishioners and parents and grandparents – voices, accents, clothes, machines, smells, mountaintops…every scene and character and era of your story sits ready for you to relive and share.
It’s not going anywhere, surviving only by the connection of a twisted, tearing, tottering twine to
flitting memories
decaying objects
fading photographs
Then I think you’ll get a glimmer of the things you now have eternity to make. Sports cars, perpetual motion machines, toys, puzzles, intricately designed clocks and music boxes and musical instruments and sermons and musicals…
Your practical, logical, artistic gifts will flourish.
All the projects you’ve imagined but couldn’t complete because of limits of time and resources on this earth… you’ll have eternity to work on.
And all this is barely a beginning.
You’ll know beyond any doubt that
God loves no one more than you
You reflect God’s image no less than anyone else
There’s no social ladder compelling you to climb
God says, “You’re all right. Enjoy.”