Imagine you’re walking down a lonely country road. The sun is dissolving into the east and gentle breezes are playing with your senses. You look to your left and there’s a gate framed by two stone posts. You enter.

You find yourself walking down a long gravel road and the only sounds you hear are the rocks crunching underneath your feet and the distant cry of crickets. On both sides are a forest of ancient trees with memories of many generations passed. Trees that stood long before the fathers of your fathers were born.

To your right, you see a clearing. In the clearing are old-fashioned folding chairs set up in a circle. As you walk toward the gathering, you hear the soft murmuring of voices. You realize you are not alone.

You step into the circle and the voices hush. They are all looking at you. You see familiar faces of people you have loved and lost, parents and grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, and sons and daughters. Only now they are no longer broken and frail and sick, but whole and strong and well, the way you remember them in the best of times.

Each one of them calls you by name. Even the ones who had forgotten now remember your name. It’s not the name you’ve taken for yourself or the one you had given to you at birth. It is a new name, yet it’s a familiar name that you’ve known all the time.

In the middle of the gathering stands a man with scars in His hands and feet. Though He looks far different than any painting or image of Him ever made, you know His face at once. The lovingkindness there is unmistakable.

You hear singing and realize that those around you are singing a hymn. You find yourself singing, too. It’s not a song you’ve ever sung before, but you know the words and the melody stirs within you at once a joy too full and a sorrow too deep for words. You feel alive as if for the first time and happy and content like you always longed to be.

You know this is home. This place that you’ve never been or ever even seen before, but the one you’ve been looking for your whole life without knowing it. This is home. This is my idea of heaven. Maybe not for you, but it works for me.