After seeing the movie Field of Dreams last night (for the one-hundredth time), I gave great thought to the question that was asked by Shoeless Joe Jackson and by Costner’s father, “Is this heaven?” Then I also watched the short slip at the end, the making of the movie, and I was surprised to hear the producer say that the lines regarding heaven could really be the theme of the movie—that the ball players who had gotten kicked out of baseball were given a second chance to come back to earth and play baseball—and that was their heaven.

I immediately pulled from my book shelf the book Heaven, by Randy Alcorn, to ponder the subject. I found that one of his chapters was entitled, “Will Our Dreams Be Fulfilled and Missed Opportunities Regained?” It seems that Alcorn thinks that heaven will be a chance for every Christian to extend or perfect what we do now; that in the New Earth we will have the chance to finish what we started now and to perfect—and even sort of grow in it. That thought excites me. Everything I always wanted to do but didn’t get a chance to do, I will get a chance to do in heaven, or on the New Earth. For instance, I think I am gifted as a teach, but haven’t had a chance to do it. In heaven I will have that chance. And I will be good at it. And the books I have written (not very well), in the New Earth those books will be wonderfully revised and many people will read them. And I will teach from those books.

Now I’m motivated to study this subject of heaven—to keep those kinds of books on my reading list, and to study it in the Bible.