Month: April 2013

I’ve got one of those new-fangled iPhones, which will do everything except butter your toast. It has GPS and a map. I can read my Facebook, send text messages, tell SIRI (the electronic secretary) to make a call or remind me later of some appointment. The iPhone takes high resolution photos and can store hundreds.  I can even use it to make phone calls through my car stereo system.

I was posting pictures to Facebook one day while visiting Mama, when suddenly I heard a trumpet call. The thought flashed through my mind, “Is that the Lord Jesus Christ, returning with the sound of the trumpet?” I can’t explain the excitement that gripped my heart, along with a wide mixture of emotions.

I wasn’t immediately raptured, but I wasn’t too worried since my 95-year-old saintly mother was still sitting there across from me, alive and well. If anyone is going to go to heaven, it will be my mother, who has faithfully served the Lord Jesus Christ for 80 years. However, I couldn’t figure out where that sound came from. I called my two sisters each and laughingly told them about it all. The first thing out of each of their mouths was, “Is it the Lord’s Return?”

Several weeks later, I was again at Mama’s house. I was taking pictures and when I posted the first one to Facebook my iPhone sounded, “Tah, tah, tah, taaaah, ta-da,” like “Charge!’ The sound was attached to my Facebook program on my iPhone so that when I posted, it made a sound to tell me it was successful.

 “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus shall we ever be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” I Thessalonians 4:16-18.

I guess the Lord was giving me preliminary practice for the great Day of the Lord when He will return to take His children home to heaven.

Easter was always my favorite holiday next to Christmas when I was growing up. Besides the excitement of getting a new dress and new shoes for church, it was because we got to see our cousins from Wichita after a long winter apart.

Our cousins came home to Vinita for Easter, Memorial Day, 4^th of July, Rodeo Week, and Labor Day, but they stayed in Wichita the rest of the year to celebrate the holidays there. Their daddy and my mama were brother and sister who had grown up out north of Vinita on a little farm and still called Vinita home. Since there wasn’t a house on the old farm, everyone always gathered at our little house to visit.

If they didn’t have any car trouble or flats they usually pulled into Vinita by 9 o’clock at night but I started watching for them as soon as supper was over. Every few minutes I’d go look out the front door expecting them to drive in. Any time a car drove by, I just knew it was them, so I’d race out the door.

. When the lights of the car shined on the front door, I ran out the front door, slamming the screen door behind me. I always wanted to be the first one there when the car pulled into the driveway.  Before the car had even come to a complete stop, I already had the car door open, and I was inside, on their laps, hugging and kissing.

That’s how I imagine it will be when we are ready to go to heaven. Our loved ones who have gone there ahead of us will be waiting for us to arrive. Some of them will be so excited they might even show up early to escort us across the great divide. You know, it is common for people who are getting ready to go to heaven to see a loved one coming to escort them home.

Jesus told us, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:2-3.

This isn’t home. Heaven is home.