“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev. 21:3).
The Bible tells us that suffering has a purpose, and the way we endure suffering is by means of hope, which in the Bible is a sure and certain confidence (Heb. 11:1). All Christians hope for three things: peaceful righteousness, joy, and heaven. Though suffering is painful at the time, “later on it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). We can endure pain and suffering by fixing our eyes on the promise of a peaceful righteousness that will be our reward in this life, and we can look forward to the joy inexpressible that awaits us in the presence of God in the next.
Jonathan Edwards once wrote that the ultimate glory in heaven is seeing God (the beatific vision). It is not seeing friends, or walking through palisades of gold, but it is experiencing the ecstasy of the perfect vision of God. Edwards explained that this vision is not one with the physical eyes, but an apprehension of God in our souls—an intellectual-spiritual vision. The saints in heaven “shall see everything in God that tends to excite and inflame love.… The effects of this vision … are, that the souls shall be inflamed with love, and satisfied with pleasure.” The fullness of love that will be experienced in heaven is like nothing we can imagine. When we gaze upon the resurrected Christ with our physical eyes, we will see God in such excellency and glory that we will praise Him forever for His wisdom and mercy in redemption. In our souls, we will experience the beatific vision of being filled with the love of God.
Contemplating such a future gives us cause to rejoice in the midst of our suffering. It helps carry us through the wastelands of this life because we have a hope of better things yet to come. “In heaven there shall be no remaining enmity, or distaste, or coldness, or deadness of heart towards God and Christ,” Edwards wrote. “All the members of that blessed society shall rejoice in each other’s happiness, for the love of benevolence is perfect in them all.… As the saints will love God with an inconceivable ardency of heart, and to the utmost of their capacity, so they will know that He has loved them from all eternity, and still loves them, and will continue to love them forever.”
It is probably safe to say that many Christians do not meditate on the truths of Scripture. Yet, meditating on your hope of heaven, on the glory of Christ, on the sufficiency of His death can bolster even the weakest faith. Go somewhere quiet today and meditate on the promises and message of Revelation 21, on the hope of heaven.
