What makes Erik, Erik? What is my essence? If my physical body is taken away from me what then defines me? If my resurrection body will be different from my current body then how will I be known? Even Jesus, after His resurrection, wasn’t immediately recognized by Mary at the open tomb or by His disciples on the road to Emmaus. It was only after He had a word with them that they knew who He was. For Mary, He simply said her name and she recalled all the stories she heard while sitting at His feet. For the disciples, their hearts burned while He recounted scripture but it wasn’t until a mealtime conversation that they recognized Him in the breaking of bread. If it won’t be our physical forms that define us in the afterlife then what will?

I think the way we will be known is by our stories. We will be recognized in heaven and ultimately in the New Heaven and Earth by the performances we gave in our earthly drama. God created us to be a characters in His Grand Story but until we perform we are just actors waiting to audition. Our souls give us the talent but it will be the performance of our lives that will get us into the cast party.

When we die we won’t be angels singing and strumming harps on clouds (particularly good news to those of us who are pitch and performance challenged.) The new heaven and earth will rather be filled with resurrected people with stories to tell. Since the New Jerusalem is the culmination of God’s plan it will also be the place where the final chapter of our lives will be written. It will be the ultimate book signing where the Author of our salvation will ink the last WORD in our personal biographies.

I like to picture heaven as a place where we sit around a campfire and tell our life stories. Gripping tales of confused and helpless sheep journeying through the valley of the shadow of death pursued by a Shepherd. Perilous adventures of travel through the dark night of the soul where we encounter the Light of the world. Memoirs of wandering through the wilderness hungry and thirsty rescued by a Ranger who nourishes us with the Bread of Life and rehydrates us with a cup of Living Water. Just as Peter’s story was redeemed at a fish fry so will our stories of redemption be shared around a heavenly campfire.

Sadly, many of our friends and family will choose not to RSVP to the campfire invitation and instead will try to warm themselves by setting fire to the discontented chaff of their lives all the time wishing their lives had been something smore.

Our lives will always be unfinished symphonies until Jesus adds the Hallelujah Chorus. Hell will be a concerto in search of a lost chord. Heaven will be a tune you can’t get out of your head.

It’s interesting that college applications often require a personal statement, a synthesis of one’s life that helps the faculty put all the life data into perspective. A curriculum vitae can provide a timeline of external accomplishments but it doesn’t reveal what motivates us. In order to be known we must tell our story.

Atheists take solace in the fading memories of the deceased while heaven transforms our lives into never ending stories. Sadly, despite the literary sophistication of our culture, our life stories are viewed as nothing but primitive cave drawings depicting the struggle to be the most fit survivor. No wonder our young people experience so much depression and anxiety. Performance without the hope of a cast party reduces life to a finite number of auditions for bit parts that always end up on the evolutionary cutting room floor. We can’t let the culture reduce God’s precious characters to extras in a saga of survival. If we want to encourage our young people then we need to help them pick up the deleted scenes and splice them together to restore the cinematic masterpiece that is their lives. We need to help them understand the important role they play in the Director’s Cut of the Greatest Story Ever Told so they can give the performance of their lives.

It is not the legend of Jesus that lives on but rather His living resurrected story retold through the scars on his hands, feet, and side. Thomas, while doubting, knew that only a Jesus with scars and a story to tell could make sense of his own.

Is story too flimsy a construct to define our essence? I think it is if we believe that we create our own stories but it is defining if we recognize that we are characters in God’s story. If we live our life as a one man show then we will eventually play to an empty house but if we assume our place as actors in God’s story then we will always perform in a crowded theater filled with a great cloud of witnesses.

Photo by Joris Voeten on Unsplash