Your Long Journey

My friend, who is not a believer, made me listen to this song the other day. She said "if anything would make me a believer, it would be this song". She identified with the longing to see loved ones after they have passed on.

A few days ago I read this article in Maclean's magazine about Near Death Experiences (NDE's). It mentions two recent books written by people who claimed to have firsthand experience of the afterlife. At age 3, Colton Burpo was dead for 3 minutes. He spent that time sitting in Jesus' lap and meeting his sister that had been miscarried that he had never heard about before. After he convalesced, he gradually told his story to his family, and his father (a Wesleyan Pastor) wrote a book called Heaven Is for Real. Another book about an NDE is written by a neuroscientist, Proof of Heaven. While in a coma, this neuroscientist was guided around the "spiritual side of existence" by a beautiful girl on a butterfly. He was later troubled that no loved ones met him in the afterlife, but after his recovery he saw a picture of his birth sister (he had been adopted) and realized that she was the girl on the butterfly.

I'm not skeptical about these stories. Of course, the article mentions scientists who try to explain NDE's with material causes: lack of oxygen to the brain, REM intrusions in the brain, etc. But if our consciousness leaves our material selves and lives on after death, there won't be a material explanation for the process by which it occurs. This is a spiritual phenomenon, not a material one. 

I don't see any reasonable argument against meeting loved ones again in the afterlife. I think the loving God that I believe in would give us familiar images to help us in our transition. Certainly, the people who experience NDE's and live seem to express a sense of commission, that they returned to comfort people by telling them about their experiences. 

 “Comfort, oh comfort my people,”
    says your God.
“Speak softly and tenderly to Jerusalem,
    but also make it very clear
That she has served her sentence,
    that her sin is taken care of—forgiven!
She’s been punished enough and more than enough,
    and now it’s over and done with.”

                           Isaiah 40:1-2 (The Message)