The Monster Under the Bed

Below is the daily Bible reading I am doing for the West Side Church. Please feel free to follow along.

Somewhere along the way most children have something they are scarred of when they go to sleep at night. For some it might be a monster lurking in the closet. For others it might be the Bogyman under the bed. For me, well it was something completely different, and a little silly. I was afraid of Heaven. That’s right you read it correctly, I was afraid of Heaven. I was not afraid of the streets of gold, or even the pearly gates. I wasn’t afraid of seeing God, or all of the Saints who have gone on before me. What I was afraid of was the eternal aspect of it. I would lay awake at night doing everything I could to not think about Heaven. When I would think about Heaven, my entire body would begin to tremble out of fear. Why was I as a little boy so scared of Heaven?

I think I was scared of Heaven because it does not end. It is for ever. Peter describes it in today’s reading (1 Peter 1) … “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an heritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you.” What scared me about Heaven is the idea that it never ends. Everything I know ends. Eventually I will be done writing this blog post. Eventually you will be done reading this blog post. Sometime today I am going to go home, cook dinner and end my day by laying my head down on my pillow and not thinking about Heaven. Everything I know here on this earth comes to and end. But the Bible says that Heaven does not come to an end, that the inheritance we gain there never perishes, spoils, or fades. I find that really cool, but as a child, really scary.

So what about God scares you? Have you come across a concept or thought in God’s Word that just scares you to death? For the most part I have overcome my fears of Heaven; I have even now come to embrace the eternalness of it. Now I need to just get over my night terrors of squirrels.

The above image is borrowed from the blog Cedric's Blog-O-Rama!