I’m writing to you on the first day of June, as Kim and I prepare to leave tomorrow for our sabbatical. We are so looking forward to a time of refreshing and fun, free of obligations and demands. However, as we prepare we are finding it increasingly difficult to keep our time uncluttered. Yet there is one very special appointment we have at the end of the month which we look forward to keeping.

The last week of the month we will head to Hollow Rock Camp Meeting for a memorial service for my Uncle Mark, who passed away last winter. Uncle Mark spent much of his life serving as a U.S. military chaplain. He was an amazing man.

He was described as gifted with an eidetic, or photographic, memory. There was no doubt Uncle Mark was smart, but to meet him you wouldn’t necessarily know it. Not because he said or did stupid things, rather because he was such a humble man. He laughed a lot, often at himself, and he was always kind. He was one of those people you loved to be around because he just radiated Jesus.

The last ten years of so of his life were greatly complicated by health problems. The trouble started while he was teaching in China and didn’t come home to receive proper treatment until the damage was irreversible. So he struggled with a catheter, a walker, and then a wheel chair. But the amazing thing was his physical struggles didn’t steal his joy or shake his faith. While many who find themselves in a similar position become depressed and bitter, Uncle Mark never changed.

I believe the reason why is explained by Philip Yancey in his book, “The Jesus I Never Knew.”

“My wife, Janet, worked with senior citizens near a Chicago housing project judged the poorest community in the United States. About half her clients were white, half were black. All of them had lived through harsh times – two world wars, the Great Depression, social upheavals – and all of them, in their seventies and eighties, lived in awareness of death. Yet Janet noted a striking difference in the way the whites and the blacks faced death. There were exceptions, of course, but the trend was this: many of the whites became increasingly fearful and anxious. They complained about their lives, their families, and their deteriorating health. The blacks, in contrast, maintained a good humor and triumphant spirit even though they had more apparent reason for bitterness and despair.

What caused the difference in outlooks? Janet concluded the answer was hope, a hope that traced directly to the blacks’ bedrock belief in heaven. If you want to hear contemporary images of heaven, attend a few African-American funerals. With characteristic eloquence, the preachers paint word pictures of a life so serene and sensuous that everyone in the congregation starts fidgeting to go there. The mourners feel grief, naturally, but in its proper place – as an interruption, a temporary setback in a battle whose end has already been determined.

I am convinced that for these neglected saints, who learned to anticipate and enjoy God in spite of the difficulties of their lives on earth, heaven will seem more like a long-awaited homecoming than a visit to a new place. In their lives, the Beatitudes have become true. To people who are trapped in pain, in broken homes, in economic chaos, hatred and fear, in violence – to these Jesus offers a promise of a time, far longer and more substantial that this time on earth, of health and wholeness and pleasure and peace. A time of reward.”

You see, that’s why we are looking forward to the service. While there will be sadness that Uncle Mark will no longer be a part of our lives here, there will also be celebration. Because there’s no doubt that Uncle Mark has found healing and wholeness, happiness and pleasure, wonder and life so rich and deep that the best we can experience in this life is only a faint reflection of what he’s enjoying now. That’s why his memorial service isn’t something we have to dread. We don’t wonder. We know, that we know, that we know that death was truly just a homecoming for Uncle Mark. His life here left us with no uncertainty.

Books like “The Shack”, “Heaven is For Real”, and “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven” are so popular because their pictures of heaven inspire hope, even in the midst of difficult times. As Jesus promised, he’s preparing a special place just for you, for me and for everyone who knows and follows him in this life. No matter what we may do to delay it, or how much we may want to avoid it, we all have an appointment with God coming at the end of our lives. Then all we’ve done with our lives will be revealed. Then those who invested their time in a relationship with Jesus and lovingly serving others will receive the reward of heaven. That’s a truth that will see us through anything, and that truly is amazing.