Heaven next stop

It has been a busy time for me with visits from grandkids and family members.  This helps the days go by and there is some joy with the sadness.  The sadness always surprises me since it comes up when I don't expect and it can make me weep easily.  That is good I'm sure, so I'll handle what I must.  One thing that has brought a lot of comfort is reading.  I'm enjoying some books on heaven as well as a book about what widows coop with.  I try to drink in whatever will help me have more understanding to my situation.  I'm also enjoying a study by Beth Moore on the life of David.  It has been amazing how comforting this study is since it has some good points about how David cries out to God in his distress.  I could relate easily to that feeling.  I have also found that when a dark cloud seems to loom over me, crying out gets rid of the cloud, and I feel so much better.  These are a few of my struggles in these first weeks since the death of my husband.  Death of my sweet husband - still so hard for me to believe!  Even though I was there by his bedside and watched it happen - still so hard to think he will never come back home or back to me on this earth.  I went out to eat tonight with a dear niece and we went to a place Tom and I went often.  It was okay, but again seems strange to be without my dear man.

Yet there is comfort, I have to say.  I think about heaven a lot lately.  I've read some good books on the subject.  All of which I check with the main source of information on heaven, the Bible.  Probably the biggest question everyone has is how can we be sure we will get to heaven.  The best verse in the Bible for that is:
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever BELIEVES on Him will not perish but have eternal life.

Asking Jesus into our hearts to help us live the way He wants us to.  That is all we need and reading His Word to know and understand who He is.  I mean His whole Word.  Tom and I read and studied all our lives and it is so full of treasure and new things to learn.  We both knew we had not arrived but the simple truth is that God loves us, gave Himself for us through Jesus, and we just need to believe and go to Him.  Jesus often said, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near."(Matthew 4:17)  Repent what does that mean?  I believe we have to realize we need to be saved from something.  Many places throughout the Bible it says no one is righteous or good.  We are all sinners or have done wrong.  In God's eyes we can't point at others we are all in the same boat lost without someone paying the price.  JESUS pays the price and we are only asked to believe it!

My dear Tom was coming close to his last days and he had a dream about heaven.  He said he saw his brother - in - law, Cornie, who had died 6 years ago.  He knew he was watching him in heaven through what seemed to be a window.  He was waving at Tom and laughing.  There were other people around as well, but Tom said he did not recognize them.  Cornie was very clear and he knew him.  Tom awoke and lay awake for awhile thinking, "I feel better like I can do the things I used to, especially like  driving!"  Finally falling asleep again, he awoke the next morning and told me he had a dream.  With tears in his eyes he could hardly get his story out.  His body felt sick again in the morning so he knew he was not healed for now.  A few weeks later I asked him, "Do you have any fears about dying like your father had years ago when death was near?"  Tom said, "No I have such peace about it ever since my dream."  That was when I realized how real it had been for him.  It gave me comfort then and still does.

He was expected in heaven and I hope you are too!  Personally I can't wait because I believe heaven is for real!  Now too I know someone very special is expecting me!