28. Remember Heaven

28. Remember Heaven: Meditations on the World to Come for Life in The Meantime. Matthew McCullough. 2025. [May] 176 pages. [Source: Review copy] [christian living, christian nonfiction, 5 stars]

First sentence (from the introduction): Another Christmas just came and went, along with a wonderful week away with our extended family. 

Matthew McCullough shares 'meditations' on WHY remembering heaven helps us to live 'in the meantime' with hope, peace, and joy--even in the midst of troubles and hard circumstances. These meditations are not daily meditations--like a devotional book--but instead a series of longer chapters. Each chapter is a different way of looking at the subject. The book is not meant--and the author discloses this--to be an exhaustive book of reasons to remember heaven in light of our 'groans and moans.' 

A few of his reasons to remember heaven:

• grounds our lives as Christians
• reframes our dissatisfaction in the meantime
• overcomes our feelings of inadequacy in the meantime
• empowers our battle with sin in the meantime
• relieves our anxiety in the meantime
• makes our suffering meaningful in the meantime
• makes our grief bearable
• sets our mission in the church 

I found the book helpful and encouraging. It didn't always go in the direction of my preconceived notions, HOWEVER it always went in a direction that surprised me and ultimately proved engaging. I had not pieced together how HOPE in heaven or 'remembering heaven' could be connected with inadequacy and anxiety. So there were chapters that were JUST the medicine I needed. I think the book will be relevant for just that reason. I think each reader will have his or her own 'favorite' chapter(s) that speak to them in their need. The Holy Spirit is good like that.

I would definitely recommend this one.

Quotes:

• Hope matters. We can't live without it. But what we hope in matters even more. We need a hope strong enough to bear the weight of our lives in the meantime. And that is precisely what we have in the hope of heaven.
• Many Christians simply aren't thinking about heaven at all and, if asked, couldn't say why they should be.
• Meditating on heaven, Richard Baxter argues, is how we use our understanding to warm our affections. It throws open 'the door between the head and the heart.' 
• How we spend our moments is how we spend our lives.
• The only way to long for a place you've never been is to long for the person whose presence makes that place what it is to you.
• Love for Christ anchors us to the future we've been promised, and it reshapes how we live here in the present.
• Pride is the poison our culture doles out as medicine. 
• We are anxious when we feel responsible, as if all the outcomes depend upon us. But God is responsible for this future. Everything depends on him. 

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible