Heaven

You can’t read the Bible without noticing that the text alternates between heaven and earth, but our normal experience is so earthbound that we can doubt the existence of heaven.

The occasional Hollywood film depicting heaven or angels stirs within us those questions about an after-life or heaven, but when the alarm goes off in the morning, we don’t expect to sit down with an angel and talk over the day ahead; it’s a flurry of marmalade and toast, grab a coffee and fly out of the front door into the real world, or, if you’re less hurried, wfh, unemployed, on holiday, or retired: read a book, book a massage, have a swim, write a poem, meditate, go to the gym and so on.

But heaven?

A few days ago I was reading the well-known Christmas verses in Luke’s gospel, where an angel appears to the shepherds to announce the birth of the Messiah, the Christ: ‘wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger’.

The verse that really caught my attention was:

‘And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men’. So it was when the angels had gone away from the shepherds into heaven…’

These shepherds no longer believed in angels and the heavenly host, even of they had before, because of the Scriptures, or what others believed, but due to an astounding personal experience.

It is remarkable how many individuals have had experiences of angels. Some accounts are more open to a rational interpretation than others. I’ve had one like this. But there are other accounts that defy an earthly explanation. I have also had one of these.

One of the reasons I do speak about this from time to time is that I was not alone on a hillside having ingested some tasty mushrooms, or was grappling with a personal crisis, this event was witnessed by thousands at the same time. In the summer of 1978, I travelled up from Kent to Yorkshire with a group from my church to attend the Dales Bible Week. During one of the evening sessions held in the large marquee there were a few thousand of us enjoying worshipping with a large band leading the music and the singing was quite loud. As I remember it, despite the loudness, it felt a little laboured, rather than free-flowing, perhaps more from our heads or the routine ‘this is what you do in a meeting’ rather than from the heart. Eventually, however, the mood softened, and we were singing a quieter song that faded into silence but not an awkward silence. Into that silence four or maybe five voices began to sing with indescribably beautiful music and harmonies impossible to reproduce on any instrument or by any earthly choir. The angels were heard but not seen.

Luke’s description ‘when the angels had gone away into heaven’ reminded me of those moments.

From that time on I have had no doubt of the reality of heaven. It’s one thing to believe in angels and heaven and the spiritual realm having read about it in the bible or heard another’s eye-witness testimony, but quite another when you’ve had first-hand experience.

The other possible encounter with an angel is far more open to doubt, or to a rational explanation.

there is a heavenly realm that is in total harmony with itself, that exudes peace, that is untroubled

I had misjudged a sharp corner on a narrow country road at night and ended up in a ditch well below the road with my motorbike on top of me. There was no one around, it was quiet. I remember lying there, quite peacefully, realising I had to check my fingers and toes to see if I could move them, which I could. But I couldn’t shift the bike. It was too heavy. So I lay there trying to figure out what to do. It was before mobile phones, so I had no means of contacting anyone. After maybe a few minutes I heard a man shouting down from the road above me and eventually he came down and helped move the bike and pull it back up to the road. Once he had checked that the bike could start and that I was uninjured he left. The handlebars were bent at an angle, but I managed to ride it home. I have no explanation for how or why this man stopped to help. It was at night and silent. He couldn’t have seen me disappear over the edge and there were no marks on the road, no fence down, and I was not making a sound and the bike had stopped running. An angel? No shimmering white clothes, strange voices, or Star-Trek-like appearing and disappearing. But then, in the bible, there are quite a few encounters with angels that appear to be ordinary men including the incident with Abraham in Genesis 18 ‘…the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth tree…with…three men standing by Him’.

I don’t expect to have any further encounters like these. I don’t wake up any more than the next person thinking Gabriel might be waiting to see me. If I do, so be it.

But that brief encounter has left me fully believing that there is a heavenly realm that is in total harmony with itself, that exudes peace, that is untroubled, and yet engaged in some loving way with our existence on Earth.