by Mark Belz, Cono Class of 1961
I’m sitting here on our patio, and the chairs facing me are empty. It’s the fourth of July, and hotter than a firecracker. To counter the heat, I’ve got a cup of hot coffee in my hand because Jean Belz, my mother, said that hot coffee would cool you off. She says she learned that from her mother, Bertha, and they were right. I think it’s because a hot drink causes you to sweat a bit, and even a tiny breeze brings a pleasant cooling. Cold drinks don’t do that, at least not as quickly.
I wish Mom were here sitting next to me. I’ll leave the chairs opposite me empty for the moment to talk with her, easier if she’s sitting next to me because I’m almost 82, and half deaf.
Of course, I’d ask her about what it’s like being in heaven, because I know only a tiny bit about the place. The Bible tells us only a few tantalizing things about life there, one of which is that we will have houses. Real estate. Mom had that only once in her life; otherwise, she and Dad were just tenants. But now she owns a mansion. She could maybe sell it if she needed the money, but I forgot—she doesn’t need money in heaven.
I ask her about other things at her current address, things that aren’t in the Bible. She just smiles and takes a sip of her coffee. “Wait and see,” she says. “It’s a surprise.” I guess I’ll have to pry it out of someone else in this imaginary meeting.
Dad appears. He has his body back—the cancer is gone. No dark circles under his eyes, perfectly straight teeth, a full head of hair. All smiles, too. I ask him about heaven, but he, like Mom, says that I must wait and see. I sense that no one is going to answer that question, so I’ll not waste anyone’s time by asking it again. Dad sits down opposite me. No coffee, though. He thinks it’s a form of poison.
There are still eight seats open out here on the patio, but I can see that eight will not be enough, judging by the long line of newcomers. LeRoy Gardner takes a seat, then Marian, then Ted and Ruth Noe, Bill Alling, Marian Draper, Dorothy Thompson, beautiful in her new dress (I can’t identify the color, never having seen it before). And more, like my brothers Nat and Joel (no seat left for Joel or anyone else), then Fred Sloan, Emma Sloan, Herb Arnold and Norma, Grandma Jessie Belz and Grandpa Ray, Bob Rayburn, Wilbur Wallis, John Sanderson. All now having gone to their eternal home.
Some of these and scores more are my earthly heroes and will forever remain so. They taught us the Bible, which they relished. They modeled patience, godliness, holy living, and love. But I can see that they aren’t crazy about being here on my patio, seats or not. “Here” isn’t “home” for them. Nor for us.
We talk for quite a spell, but as the coffee pot nears the “empty” mark, I begin to realize that heaven is filling up quickly, just like my patio. This has serious personal implications because at eighty-one-going-on-eighty-two, I am going to join them soon—maybe this evening! As the hymnist wrote, soon and very soon, I am going to see my King. I will be sitting at his coffee table, sipping something better than Starbucks.
Old age radically changes your perspective. Though not all at once. At age 20 I didn’t want to die. But in the interim of sixty years my perspective, my desires, have gradually changed. There is still a little bit of me that wants to live here on earth, but it’s now down to about five percent. Maybe less. The greater part of me doesn’t want to go on with heart attacks, Crohn’s disease, crippled up legs, incontinence, deafness, diabetes, sin, irrelevance, broken relationships that cannot be mended this side of heaven, and more really bad things. I’m just tired of the hassle, as my father-in-law said he was, shortly before he died.
I suspect that other sisters and brothers in my age group are experiencing the same feelings, the same changes in perspective. That is good; maybe we would have been better off if, earlier in life, we would have had such a change in outlook. Our decisions would have been influenced more “with eternity’s values in view.” We would have more readily “turned our eyes upon Jesus,” so that the things of earth would have grown strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.
We are where we are, though, and it doesn’t do us a bit of good to look back merely to wish we had been different earlier. All heaven is before us now. Your conversations over coffee with your mother, in her new mansion, will be pure happiness. Any tears will be tears of joy.
I can’t wait. But if you get there before I do, tell all my friends I’m comin’ too!
