I sometimes wonder what heaven will be like.

The Biblical writers have done their best to describe it, but words don’t seem to have been up to the task of conveying it to me with particular clarity.

A new earth without any sickness or suffering sounds like a good prospect to me as two 12 year old boys have died on the ward this week – one to a crisis of his sickle cell disease, and the other to a rampant viral infection affecting his whole body.

There are descriptions in the book of Revelation of a huge throne with all the nations before it worshiping their Lord. Such a picture probably is the dominant picture in the popular mind of what is in store for us. I think that I have had a little foretaste of it a few times in recent weeks. At the hospital we have daily worship for staff to start the day. A time of focusing together on why we are here, building us together as a team, and being empowered for the day ahead. The bulk of our worship usually takes place in English as it is our common tongue. However of late we have been having different parts of Uganda presenting every Friday. Uganda has many tribes and each has it’s own language. Differences, particularly tribal differences can be a source of great division, and attempts at comparison are often based around finding grounds for superiority of one’s own or diminution of they the other group. Evidence for the consequences of this are evident in the recent and ongoing chaos in Kenya, or modern Northern Irish history. However God has made us all different by design rather than accident. That is not just ok, that is good, indeed very good?

Standing in the midst of staff worshiping enthusiastically in Teso and Acholi (languages I don’t understand even one word of) and having a strong sense of God’s presence as these folk were praising their Lord with all their hearts is a powerful experience. Not understanding the exactitudes of the words isn’t necessary to appreciating the key import of the praise they were giving to their God. For a moment I caught a glimpse of the power of uncountable numbers of people from every nation before God’s throne worshiping from their hearts. Christianity is not a middle class white Western world social construct. This God we are worshiping is God over all the earth He has made. The reality of that can seem distant in our busy media full lives, but man, I have been struck forcefully (yet) again of who are God is, and indeed how blessed I am to know him and work with His people here.

May you know something of that afresh too.

Cheers for now,

Rory