I’d seen many sunsets before, but never like this.
Sitting high up on a desert dune at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, my wife and I gazed westward into the setting sun and saw the brilliance of color explode before us. The sun’s sinking light turned the white sand into a glistening, sparkling shade of pink. Distant mountains transformed from brown plinths to purple silhouettes. The skies gave up their sheer blue and traded white clouds for yellow, orange, red, and magenta hues. A world I had never seen came to life before me.
I still think about that sunset. I want to return to that day, when almost everything was perfect and my wife and I couldn’t erase the smiles off our faces. It was heaven.
Except—it wasn’t. However perfect that day and that sunset, however brilliant those moments of tranquility and beauty, the joys they brought were fleeting and temporary. We aren’t in heaven; we haven’t arrived at our eternal home. Pastor and author Matthew McCullough offers this welcome reminder in his latest book, Remember Heaven: Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime. The world we inhabit and the lives we trudge through contain far more difficulties and burdens than occasional blips of beauty and transcendence. When we consider life on earth, our despair can run deep.
However, McCullough helps us see beyond our dreary and toilsome lives. (I’m only echoing what the biblical writer of Ecclesiastes generally affirms about our days “under the sun.”) Through his book, we glimpse the “world to come,” gaining insight on the challenge of living now in light of that glorious future.
Remember Heaven follows a simple pattern. McCullough identifies seven significant human longings and struggles, demonstrates how heaven will perfectly resolve them all, and then derives practical strategies for life today in light of our eternal hope.
Each of the longings McCullough identifies speaks to every human’s core desires and needs. His book devotes one chapter apiece to our dissatisfactions, our inadequacies, our struggles with sin, our anxieties, our suffering, our grief, and our quests for purpose and meaning.
As McCullough points believers to our heavenly future, he shows how it offers answers to each gap and weight. God promises joy for the dissatisfied, righteousness for the inadequate, holiness for the sinner, security for the anxious, relief for the suffering, comfort for the grieving, and purpose for the people of God together. It’s a beautiful life ahead for those who walk the road of faith here and now.
In the meantime, McCullough argues, we can build a kind of holy practicality into our living. Much of what he recommends in this regard would be compatible with C. S. Lewis’s portrait, in The Great Divorce, of insubstantial souls being “thickened up a bit,” resulting in solid, stable, heaven-ready saints.
McCullough calls us to set our eyes on Christ, fix our hearts on the love of God, endure suffering for a short while, and battle sin with a habit of “looking, loving, likeness,” through which seeing God increases our love for him, which in turn helps us obey him. The Christian life here and now is a matter of sharing our future hope, living in light of our future home, and being renewed in the holiness Christ gives. To borrow the title of Eugene Peterson’s well-known book, it involves “a long obedience in the same direction.”
The book generates a thirst for heaven. McCullough opens the Bible and reveals the God-centered reality of a believer’s eternal destiny, which makes us crave that future. As I noted earlier, who doesn’t struggle with this life in one way or another? Who doesn’t feel deep longings for a better life and greater satisfaction? The rise and fall of the human race all traces back to idolatrous and misplaced desires that replace the rightful longing for the God who created us and is worthy of our worship.
McCullough helps us see the true and better offering that Jesus presents in himself. He invites us to recognize the disappointing outcomes of this world’s promises and to embrace our Savior’s alternatives. Time and again, he helps us see a superior life in eternal glory with Christ, which encourages us to long for that life.
Like salt, Remember Heaven not only generates a thirst for heaven but also preserves us from putting down permanent roots in this world. Not only does the book expose idols, temptations, and other weak substitutes for the gifts of God (and for the gift of God himself). It also continually reminds us that this life will pass away. Whatever shallow, ephemeral pleasures it can offer, we shouldn’t hesitate to trade them for the solid, eternal promises of God in Christ.
Of course, no book on any subject can comprehensively deal with its subject matter. Especially when it deals with a topic as richly inexhaustible as heaven and eternal life.
As an author, I aspire to address certain topics in totality. But hitting a few key points inevitably means leaving certain things on the cutting-room floor. Such limitations are inherent in the craft of writing, and McCullough’s work is not immune to them. At times, he overlooks (or gives cursory treatment to) some realities of this life and the life to come.
Apart from the book’s last chapter, McCullough’s presentation of heaven takes a highly individualistic shape. The hopes that heaven fulfills, as he outlines them, address individual problems and needs. The joy of heaven is the joy of knowing Jesus perfectly. The righteousness of heaven overcomes personal inadequacies. The holiness of heaven erases the stain of individual sin. The security of heaven relieves the burden of individual anxiety. The comfort of heaven eases the pain of individual suffering. And the eternal love of God in heaven washes away individual grief over the loss of friends and loved ones.
When McCullough gets around to writing about the communal or corporate life of God’s people, he emphasizes the imperative of evangelistic mission. But this downplays several important matters, like the societal effects of sin, the problem of evil, and even the groaning of the natural world, which “waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed” (Rom. 8:19).
Remembering Heaven could have addressed these gaps by leaning more deliberately on the biblical language and vision of an eternal kingdom, a heavenly city, and a just and righteous king who deals with all the nations. The turmoil of our times isn’t merely a matter of personal worries and laments. We ache and groan as we see despots topple institutions, civic injustice and cruelty oppress the helpless, and lies and disinformation plague every facet of our lives.
The ultimate hope of heaven is a kingdom that will not be shaken. It promises an eternity where a truly just and merciful king sets all things right. The healing of the nations is present in God Almighty, who washes away the tears and suffering of his people. What so many ache for today is something more than having their own tears wiped away. We long, as well, to see God establish a comprehensive reign of justice and peace.
In fairness, McCullough writes Remember Heaven with a specific purpose. He wants to show how living in light of God’s eternal promises strengthens us to follow Christ here on earth. Given this emphasis, the book’s personalized focus makes sense. Perhaps, down the road, McCullough might supplement it with a follow-up volume demonstrating how God’s promised kingdom shapes our hopes and expectations for the new heaven and earth.
Spectacular sunsets, like all our best memories, are mere teasers. They offer tantalizing glimpses of an eternal best day, of radiant beauty that lasts forever. They are tastes and shadows of the solid life we’ll one day enjoy in the good and satisfying presence of the Lord. Remember Heaven helps “thicken us up” for that future by reminding us of the eternal glory to come and equipping us now for the life that is.
Jeremy Writebol is the lead campus pastor at Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, Michigan. His latest book is Make It Your Ambition: Seven Godly Pursuits for the Next Generation.
