**Disclaimer** I typically do not talk about religion or my faith for the same reason that I don't talk about politics... I know how I feel and I don't think that it is necessary for me to have to explain myself or put my own ideas on others, but I've just read this book and it's made me think, so I'm going to break my own rules and share. Plus, it's been one of the favorite things I've read in awhile.
So last weekend when we were home I saw this book sitting on Donna's coffee table called "Heaven is for Real." Now somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a Good Morning America interview with this boy, so I was intrigued. I picked it up and started reading. For the last couple months I've been making my way through James Patterson's Women's Murder Club Series, so I thought, this might be a quick little read, something different.
I was in for such a treat that I never expected. Not only was it comforting, but it made me think, made me challenge my own thoughts, and made me realize that even though I haven't been the most religious person lately, I share the same ideas and beliefs as this four year old that made his own trip to heaven and then came back to tell his story. I shouldn't feel bad for having the same thoughts as Colton, Jesus himself said, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." So I'm going to go with that. I don't need to have this true deep understanding of why things are the way that are, I just need to know that heaven is for real.
With the amazingness of my kindle I was able to easily highlight passages that made me think and that I found comfort in. If you've had enough of the religiousness you can stop reading, it won't hurt my feelings, I probably would have stopped at the disclaimer, but if you'd like to know, below are some of my favorite passages.
"What is childlike humility? It's not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It's that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think... It's the opposite of ignorance- it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it's hard."
~This is how I feel and how I've always felt, maybe that's what I don't like talking about my religion or faith, because I'm not up on a soapbox with an agenda to try to get people thinking like me, I'm just thinking and praying on my own, trying hard to accept reality as it is.
"Dad, no body's old in heaven, and nobody wears glasses."
~How fantastic is that. I've always wondered what people would be like in heaven, would we just be angels, would we still look like ourselves, would we even be in human form? Those are all questions that I've always thought of, but Colton saw it and he said that every body in heaven is young. People are probably in heaven, well eternity, feeling how they felt best, and of course without glasses, because everyone should have the perfect eye sight in heaven... and there must not be eye doctors there.
"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
~And this is where the rest of us fall in. We haven't seen, but we can't question it. We just believe. There is no science behind it, not mathematical equation, nothing. Just the pure faith that we have in our hearts. Since I believe, and since I don't question, I know that there will be an after life, and by the way Colton says things are just fantastic.
There are way too many thought inducing passages and interesting things that come out of this young boys voice, but my favorite part of the book, which I'm not going to share with you because it was just really special and I don't want to spoil it, was when Colton finally sees the picture that best depicts Jesus as how he saw him. It was a picture that was painted by another little girl, but this girls family did not believe in God. Jesus visited this girl and then she painted this picture of what she remembered. Colton had seen hundreds of other pictures of Jesus and just couldn't decide what was wrong with his appearance, but it wasn't right and then he saw her painting... and it was Jesus, and heaven is for real!
No comments:
Post a Comment