HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 17, 2024 – Let me tell you a secret. The people in your life now, the ones you know personally and the ones you only know of, will be wiped from your memory when you’re in Heaven unless they too make it Home. Scripture ensures us that all our pain will disappear in Heaven, and for most of us, people are the source of our pain. That we will no longer be plagued by those who hate God (and who therefore hate us) is a great comfort to me, as I know it is to you. There will be no more weeping for the lost in Heaven. They will be to us as if they never were.

They, on the other hand, the ones who don’t make it to Heaven, will never be able to forget us. When I say “never”, I mean it in the truest sense. Not ever will the memory of their unkindnesses be wiped from their thoughts. They will relive the pain they inflicted over and over and over again for all eternity. Not ever will they be able to escape the horrific understanding of what they forfeited when they said “No” to God and his Way. Over and over and over again, God gave them chance after chance, opportunity after opportunity, but they persisted in their pride and in their arrogance and in their “cool” and in their “No!”, and it brought them to the Hell of their own making both on Earth and beyond, all of their own free will.

I have cried for these people. For some, I cry still; the rest I let be. God directs me who to cry for and who to let be. I forgive them all because God directs me to and I know they don’t know what they’re doing, but I also know that nothing I can say will reach them, not the ones I don’t cry for anymore. Not ever can they be reached. Not ever will they repent. They are the eternally lost even while they stagger through whatever’s left of time and space. They arrived here lost and will leave it that much more lost, and both their former and latter states are of their own doing.

Of the ones God directs me to still cry for, even if they don’t make it Home, their eternal pain can be lessened. This is what I pray for them. We can help them in that way, the ones God directs us to still pray for. We can help lighten their eternal load, smooth the jagged edges of memories they will never (not ever) escape. Even if they’ve stonewalled us and erected a firewall of pride around themselves that we cannot get past, we can still help soothe them through our prayers. This is our job as born-again believers and children of God, though it’s a sad one. The only time I cry now is when I pray for these people.

Our whole being should be focused on God and on the promises he’s made to us through scripture, through Jesus, and through prayer. We should hold fast to God’s promises and on the foretaste of those promises because they are the only thing of real value here in Earth. People’s promises are as flighty and changeable as the wind, but God’s promises never change. Not ever. These we should stake our hope on and tie ourselves to, even while we’re buffeted by the broken vows of others.

How do we do this? How do we remain focused on God and his promises and look past the rest? By reminding ourselves to endure to the end. By reminding ourselves that this too will pass. By reminding ourselves to forgive, not just for the sake of the here and now but more importantly for the sake of the hereafter. Our hereafter. Our promised hereafter. We need to remind ourselves of what’s waiting for us in Heaven and so see past those who are stoning us here on Earth, the way Stephen saw past and forgave his murderers when he saw the vision of God and Jesus.

Fix your eyes on the heavenly realm, the ultimate prize of God’s promises. Of all that you know and all that you feel, you take home only the good. The rest will be (to you) as not.