What will our bodies look like in heaven?
To push the point a little bit, what will the bodies of people with disabilities look like in heaven?
What will our daughter Penny look like in heaven?
When the fullness of God’s love reigns in our lives and on this earth (which is to say, when we “get to heaven”), we will be transformed. There will be no more “mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4). But we will also retain our distinctive identities. Our ethnicities. Our particularities. Even, I would guess, the markers that on this earth right now signify disability.
I used to think that disabilities would be “fixed” or “cured” when heaven and earth became one. I didn’t think about my own body being fixed or cured. Eventually, I realized I was thinking of people with both physical and intellectual disabilities as if they existed in a different category of human, as if they were more broken than I am. I imagined heaven as a place where Penny would become more like me in her mind and her body. But what if heaven is a place where I will become more like Penny?
What if heaven is a place where we both will become more like Jesus, not in how we look, but in how we love?
Learn more with Amy Julia:
- A Good and Perfect Gift
- Blurring the Lines of Disability
- Draw Near to Disability, Draw Near to Humanity
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