I'll be seeing you

A few years ago I bought my father Heaven by Randy Alcorn. We have been meaning to read it, but it has been sitting on the end table unopened. But there is nothing like watching your wife go off to that mysterious place to rekindle interest, so my father brought the book with him to the hospital whenever he visited. On the night before she died, he sat by her side on a cot reading it and being greatly encouraged.

One thing continues to stick in his craw (and I shall have to consult both the book and The Book to find a sure answer). That sticking point for my father is the question of whether we will know one another in heaven. Will husbands remember their wives, and children their parents, and will we know the neighbors and co-workers we had commerce with for better or for worse?

For my part, I am trying to understand where the question even comes from—it seems so very odd. For why would not the presumption of knowing be the default presumption? If there is no reason not to suppose we will know in heaven those whom we knew on earth, how does the query even enter the mind?

And yet, and yet, I seem to recall the source. For the church that my father and I were both raised in, in trying to persuade the flock of the doctrine of complete celestial happiness, felt the need to buttress the point with the addition of an ancillary homespun doctrine of their own devising by “good and necessary consequence” (as logicians used to say) that we would not know one another in heaven. How could it be otherwise (it was reasoned) if we are to have unblemished felicity? For if I recall the way I wronged old Joe, or the way he wronged me, how shall I be happy?

But as my father was raising the subject for the umpteenth time, I recalled this from Scripture:

“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said … I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:26, 29, ESV).

I mentioned to my father this incident from the night before Jesus’ crucifixion, sharing my impression that it was the mutual understanding of both Jesus and His friends that when they got on the Other Side of this veil of tears, they would have no trouble recognizing one another, nor recalling all that they had been through together.

As to the question of lingering bad feelings from past earthly failures, it is clear that the apostle Peter, if anyone, would have had some. But as his epistles reveal, he was already getting well beyond the bog of self-recrimination and into an eternal perspective on such matters. And the man was not even in heaven yet.