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A Stranger In Heaven

by James Barringer  
7/21/2010 / Short Stories

I stood nervously in front of a throne so huge I almost couldn't see the top of it. White light poured out, so bright that I felt like it was shining right through me, my skin pale and ethereal in comparison. I couldn't even look at the throne, and it's probably a good thing I didn't, because I was so anxious that I had to keep my head down or I felt like I'd throw up.

"Do you know what it takes to get eternal life, Mr. Barringer?" The voice from the throne didn't boom, the way I'd always thought it would; it just was, it was everywhere at once, like I was feeling it with my whole being and not only my ears.

"Well - sure, I mean, I did the best I could with the life you gave me, right? I was a pretty good person. Okay, maybe not the best, but I was better than a lot of people I know."

"I'm sorry," the voice throbbed. "You know better than that. You heard your whole life that the wages of sin is death. The only way to get eternal life is to be free from sin. Not just good, Mr. Barringer, but perfect, and the only way to do that is by placing your faith in my Son so that I can forgive your sins. My justice requires that I send you to -"

"Wait!" I shouted. "Give me a chance. Just let me into heaven and I'll show you I deserve it. You bargain with people, right? There was that time in the Bible you gambled with what's his face, Abraham, right?"

There was a long silence, and then a rhythmic thudding that I belatedly realized was laughter. "You should know one thing. Heaven will be full of perfect people. Not only will it be very uncomfortable for you, I have to warn you: if your errors begin to make heaven imperfect, I'm going to boot you out so fast your hind end will be aching for ten thousand years."

"Deal!" I announced, perhaps a little too eagerly. "Let's do this thing."

Two angels came and took me by the arms, escorting me past the throne. I was still in disbelief that my gamble had worked. We emerged from some kind of cloud into a city, so vast that my eyes couldn't take it all in, walking down gleaming roads under a sky so blue it made my eyes hurt. I tugged my left arm out of that angel's grasp and shielded my face as we strode down wide avenues, past vast buildings packed full of people laughing and enjoying themselves.

"Is one of these mine?" I asked, vaguely remembering something about a mansion in heaven being prepared for believers.

"Somewhat," answered one of the angels, as we kept walking to the outskirts of town, to a tiny shack that butted up against the city wall. "This is yours."

"Er...it's not what I thought it would be."

"Why should you get the same reward as the ones who lived their whole lives for Jesus - or sacrificed their lives?" the angel asked pointedly, staring at me. I looked quickly away from his eyes. The two angels shrugged at each other and began to walk away, and I could hear them muttering: "No one's ever been ungrateful for his mansion before. Such selfishness! What was the Father up to, letting this one in here?"

Mansion? I didn't know what they were talking about. This place was barely a doghouse; I doubted there was even enough room to lay down in there. I watched some people walking past, chuckling and plainly enjoying each other's company. I expected them to look at my pathetic house, anticipated some judgmental look. They looked at me - but merely smiled, as if happy to see me. There was no trace of judgment in their eyes, which somehow annoyed me even worse than if they had disapproved.

Finally I saw one woman walking alone, toward a house bigger than mine down the avenue a bit. I had a brilliant idea: maybe someone would trade with me. These Christians were supposed to be kind and giving, after all. Perhaps I could milk that generosity and get ahead in the housing game.

The woman heard me walking up behind her, and turned, smiling broadly at me. "He is risen, my friend! Worthy is the Lamb!"

"Uh, yeah, that. Listen, I'm new here, and I was just wondering if you wanted to trade me houses. I live in that one over there." I pointed toward the doghouse.

"I think that's a lovely house, friend. I'd love to trade you, but this is the house that Jesus prepared for me. I can't choose to give it away."

"Come on," I pleaded. "Just for one night."

There was a flicker of something across her face, something I hadn't seen yet on my walk through the city: maybe it was stress. Before another word left my mouth, those two angels showed up out of nowhere. One grabbed me by the shoulder and began to push me in the other direction; the other put his arm around the woman and began to whisper comforting words to her.

"Stop it," the first angel told me. "Don't bring that selfish desire here. You will be content with what the Lord has given you. Do you understand me?"

Feeling as if I was back in first grade, I nodded mutely.

"You'd know that already if you'd gotten here the right way," the angel chided. "Everyone who comes here is conformed to the image of Christ. They know what it means to be joyful and peaceful. Your self-absorption is not welcome here." He took my chin and lifted it so that I was forced to look into his eyes. "This is your only warning."

Whoa. These guys took this whole heaven thing seriously. Before I knew it, the angels were gone, and the woman waved brightly to me as if nothing had happened between us. I waved back, faking a smile, and trudged back toward my shack. Okay, maybe I had badly misjudged. I was trying to milk the system, and that was a bad move. Perhaps I should just lay low at first, get a feel for the place. No sense getting myself known for all the wrong reasons this early in the game.

Just as I arrived at my door, my next-door neighbor showed up holding a shovel in his hand. "Hey there, friend! I see you haven't started working your land yet. Want me to give you a hand?"

I frowned at the patch of dirt next to my building. "I don't get it."

"Oh, you must be very new here. God gave us each a small patch of land to work as an act of worship. But it won't be like farming on earth; we won't have to fight against the land anymore. God will make things grow huge and fast. It's just part of the way we glorify him."

"I still don't follow," I said, pretending that I was wiping some wax out of my ear. "Did you say we work? In heaven?"

"Sure, friend! We're here to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And I told you, working the land that God gives us is one way we do that. What, did you think that we were going to lounge around forever, all of our needs attended to, with no real purpose to existence?"

I mumbled something and turned away. This was too much. I hadn't banked on manual labor when I talked my way in here. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I thought I saw a certain angel glowering at me, and nonchalantly grabbed the shovel that my neighbor had left leaning against my shack. With a grunt, I jammed it into the dirt, which dutifully parted beneath the blade. This sucked. I started shoveling lines, mind numb with boredom, till I felt something walk up behind me.

"You don't enjoy it, do you," chided that pesky angel.

I stared him down, not sure whether to argue or lie. Lying in this place was probably a bad idea. "No," I told him, jamming the shovel in the ground. "It's tedious."

"That's only because you don't understand worship," the angel answered, gently running his finger along the shovel. "If you knew what it meant to worship God, you'd be able to take unimaginable joy in even this mundane act of work. You'd see it as a beautiful sacrifice to a God who delights in it. Since you're missing that particular piece of the puzzle, you're doomed. You can only ever see it as drudgery."

"So basically, I'm stuck doing this thing forever, and unable to find pleasure in it. Sounds an awful lot like..." I left the thought unfinished.

The angel smirked. "For you, it might well be. Come on, though. It's time for the gathering."

He wrapped strong hands around my shoulders and suddenly we were airborne, tearing through the sky so fast that I couldn't even let loose a terrified scream. Through the alleys and between the buildings we blasted, finally emerging into a giant lawn, with a river running through the middle, lit by unimaginably bright light coming from that throne I'd seen earlier. Around me were thousands - no, millions - no, maybe even billions - of people, all leaping and dancing and singing toward the throne, lost in bliss. People were surging onto the lawn from every direction, a giant mass of humanity, and the songs that caught my ear contained words and languages I recognized and others I'd never heard before. It should have all blurred together into a meaningless cacophony, but there was an otherworldly beauty in it, a harmony in diversity the likes of which I'd never heard.

"This is kind of cool," I told the angel. "I like music."

"Every seventh day here we come to worship the King," he replied, bobbing his head to the music. "The whole day is dedicated to worship in song and prayer."

"The...whole day?"

"All of it." He looked down at me and I swear he winked. "Enjoy it. I'll be back."

Enjoy it I did, for the first hour, but then boredom started to set in. I didn't recognize the songs and I didn't know how anyone could just sing about God for any length of time. Some people around me were on their knees, speaking to the throne directly, as if that distant King could hear us. Others were excitedly telling the others around them all about who they'd been on earth and what terrible things God had saved them from. A few people approached me to hear my story, but I didn't have one. I pretended I was praying and they left me alone. Before long I glanced around and stealthily began to make my way back toward the perimeter of the lawn.

That angel was waiting for me, leaning his shoulder on a building. "Taking a bathroom break?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "It's a joke, you see. The glorified body doesn't produce waste."

I didn't know what to say; he'd caught me sneaking out.

He shrugged. "You just plain don't get it. This place will never be heaven to you."

"It's heaven, period, right? It beats the alternative, right?"

"Does it?" he asked. "Working the land bores you. The gathering bores you. You're jealous of your neighbors because you still have the old selfishness. Heaven is perfect - you're not. You simply can't be here. And honestly, if you aren't a hundred percent sold out for God, if worshiping him isn't the most important thing in the universe to you, you're going to be excruciatingly bored here for eternity. This place, this heaven, will be your hell."

"I'll take my chances! It beats the alternative!"

"I'm afraid I don't have a choice," he said gently, and somehow I detected that there was real compassion, real pity, in his voice. "You can't stay here. It's not for you."

Suddenly I found myself whipping, spinning, out beyond the light and into the outer darkness, as a different kind of light began to glow on the horizon.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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