Won’t Be’s in Heaven

Dearest Rachel –

We’ve been taught since time immemorial that everything that exists as part of our ecosystem does so for a reason. Call it God’s plan or the great circle of life as you will, but supposedly, every organism (or family of organisms) serves a purpose within the natural world, even if we don’t understand it. Even things that seem to serve no beneficial use – mosquitoes come to mind, offhand – are necessary as food for the songbirds, according to your namesake Dr. Carson; and as a result, it’s evidently better that a million or so succumb to malaria rather than let the earth be subjected to a silent spring forever.

With that being said – while at the same time considering the assumption that nothing bad exists on your side of the veil – I wonder what exactly you might no longer have to deal with over there, and what the trickle-down effects of that lack amount to. I hardly need to tell you that this stems in part from this cold that I’m still struggling to shrug off, as I can’t figure out the point of such viruses in the grand scheme of things, save as facilitators of the death and decay that the original Adam brought into the world by choosing to eat the forbidden fruit.

I suspect a lot of things exist in this dimension to clean up after such death and decay; we have whole orders of high-level animals that are scavengers (which were considered to be unclean in Levitical law, perhaps for the very fact that they had no purpose in a ‘perfect’ universe, but were necessary here in this one), as well as single-celled organisms that perform similar tasks even within our own bodies, such as our white blood cells. But without disease and infection, would they serve a purpose? If not, do they even exist within our glorified bodies? Sure, they were created to serve a purpose in a fallen world, but in one that isn’t, is there a point to their existence?

The question comes to mind not just because I’m continuing to fight off this cold – which, as each day wears on, feels like I’m making progress, until I wake up the following day, still congested and achy – but because of an old song that popped into my mind recently that I can’t seem to shake. It’s one of those ones written by the Gaithers when I was still a kid (which my folks had, once upon a time, but I doubt ever played when you could have heard or remembered it), and has since fallen into such obscurity that it doesn’t even exist on YouTube or any of those music playlist sites; all I could find is a link to a website playing and offering obscure music tracks for sale and download. I can’t even find the lyrics for it anywhere online, which is odd.

Then again, maybe this is a number that the Gaithers are just as happy to have fall into such obscurity; while there’s nothing obviously out of line, doctrinally speaking, about it, the one line about there not being “teachers that aren’t my type” sung by one little kid comes pretty close to the line. After all, if everyone who wasn’t “our type” was excluded from heaven – and this criteria was applied to everyone based on everyone else who was offered entrance there – the place would be essentially devoid of people entirely – including ourselves! – as there’s not a one of us that doesn’t rub someone else the wrong way at some point. Even the disciples didn’t always get along with each other, although, apart from Judas Iscariot, I think it’s safe to say we can expect to find them up there, regardless.

To live above, with saints we love,
Ah, that will be our glory!
To live below, with the saints we know,
…well, that’s a different story!

I don’t know who originally wrote this little bit of doggerel, but it certainly seems to apply to this situation. It may well be that, because of this line (among other things), the Gaithers decided to let this song fade away into distant memory – but, of course, the internet can’t quite let go of it, even if its grasp on this song is more tenuous than most. At least I managed to find it, so I could exorcise the earworm from my own head; now it’s up to you (and whoever might be reading over your shoulder) to determine if it was at all accurate.

Still, for all the things that we’d like to think “won’t be” in the hereafter, it’s hard to imagine their absence – and what the spillover effects of that absence might result in. Life over there will be different than it is on this side, and must take some getting used to, I shouldn’t wonder. I wish I knew what those differences were, honey; more to the point, I wish you could tell me about them, so as to prepare me.

For now, though, I just have to deal with what’s on this side of the Jordan, so until then, just keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.