Daily Leson for January 15, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 16 verses 3, 5 and 6:

3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

A few weeks back I was asked to officiate the funeral service for a ninety-something year-old woman. I sat and listened to the family tell about their mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. As we were sitting talking, one of the granddaughters remembered back to a funny conversation she had with her grandmother 25-years or so ago. As a little girl, probably around 6 or 7, she had heard of heaven and wondered about it and therefore asked her grandmother, the person most likely to know, just what exactly heaven was going to be like. "Oh it's going to be wonderful," her grandmother told her, "it's like we'll get to go to church not just once a week, but every single day."  With apologies to the pastor in the room, the granddaughter confessed that that did not quite sound like her idea of heaven.  "All I could think of," she said, "was the thought of having to wear scratchy pantyhose not just once per week but every single day -- for all eternity."

We all laughed and I did not take offense. The thought of scratchy pantyhose isn't my idea of heaven either. But in that moment I also learned something about her grandmother, what she loved, where she had spent her life, and how it had shaped her vision for the age to come.

If you spend 90 or so years in the church, weathering the storms, sticking through the bad preachers, and enduring all the pettiness, in the end something happens. You begin to look around and something dawns on you -- something that you did not see or even want to see before. That these church folk, these sinners and ne'er-do-wells stumbling their way into the church doors Sunday after Sunday with scratchy pantyhose and ill-fitting suits on their backs and green-bean casseroles and potato salad in their hands, really are the saints.  As the Psalmist says, "They are the excellent ones in whom is my delight."

You can't see this after a year or two; and you see it probably even less after six or seven years. You have to stick around to see it -- and it usually takes takes a lifetime.  But once you've seen it you know and you know it's true: Heaven is like being able to go to church, not just once a week, but every single day for all eternity.