Imagine living in a place where there is never any darkness. Not a shadow, not a flicker. God Himself is the light, and it is enough.

But the absence of darkness means more than just physical light. It means no moral darkness either. No cruel words. No abuse. No mean-spiritedness. No filthiness hiding behind a smile. Everything in heaven is genuine — kindness, love, joy, justice, holiness, graciousness — and none of it is performed. There is no hypocrisy, no deviousness. All of that will be absent.

It is almost impossible to imagine, isn’t it? We have never lived anywhere like that.

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb… and there will be no night there. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Revelation 21:22-27 ESV

A word about what we can and can’t know

Heaven is genuinely difficult to picture. Much of what Scripture gives us comes through visions, and visions use figurative language that scholars don’t always agree on. That’s okay. There are things we can be confident about, and things we simply have to hold loosely.

One of those looser things is the timeline. The new heavens and new earth described in Revelation won’t arrive until this earth is finished. But I don’t think that should diminish our view of heaven in the meantime. God and all His attributes will be there. Jesus will be there. We will be there on the basis of His merit alone. Whether we have our glorified bodies yet at that point — I honestly don’t know. But I do know we will enjoy it.

I’ll be honest — precise theology is not my gift. I need precise theologians in my life to keep me from veering off track! What I care about most is how theology lands in real life. And on the things Scripture is genuinely unclear about — the fine details of heaven, the fine details of the Second Coming — I try to hold my conclusions loosely and trust that whatever God has planned will be better than anything I could work out on my own.

Something to sit with this week

Think about what it means to keep heaven in view — especially in hard seasons. Not as an escape, but as an anchor. This is not the final chapter. And the final chapter is going to be lit up with the glory of God.