Flannelgraph Heaven

Intro Triptych 1 of 3

sunday chevy ©k.j.doogan

My childhood memories are embedded with amazing—though somewhat vague—Sunday School stories of Heaven.

When I was growing up my family was very involved at our church, which was an idyllic place to be a kid. Many of my earliest memories took place in a Dutch Doored, lemon yellow, crayon scented Sunday School classroom. The best part? Storytime. Our teacher Miss Evelyn, would balance a giant flannel-covered board precariously atop a wooden easel, lean into our little faces and tell amazing Old and New Testament adventures. She illustrated the stories with flock-backed scenes and characters she’d slowly, wondrously pull out of a giant folder, carefully smooth down onto the flannel as the story unfolded. We were mesmerized.

Flannelgraph Sunday School is where I learned three things about Heaven. First, cartoon Jesus once lived on Earth but rose into the clouds, where he now abides in a pastel castle. Second, Jesus has a Heavenly Father who is a glowing King-of-Kings sitting on a golden throne just outside the castle. And third, Heaven is the home-base of Jesus’ army of angels, who all wear white dresses and flip-flops, giant wings and swords. 

Oh, how I loved all of this!

In elementary school my knowledge grew, partly because I started midweek church kid’s clubs. I memorized Bible passages to help me understand and remember God's plan for my future with him in Heaven. I learned that sin was the rudder of my ship, and was steering me down a different course than Heaven.

I learned that God sent his son, Jesus, to come down from Heaven on a rescue mission. He lived here and was tempted with everything I could imagine—and handled it perfectly. He then allowed himself to be hung on a cross to pay for all of my sinning so I could be forgiven. Because I wanted forgiveness and believed what Jesus did for me, this allowed me to have a new heart, and put me on an unchangeable course to live with him in Heaven someday. When Jesus was still on earth, he said, "I'm going to back to Heaven to prepare a place for you!" (I was so excited about living in my pastel Heaven!) This was such good news.

These were all crucial issues for me. I spent many school recess periods earnestly retelling Bible stories to my friends to make sure they knew they could also head for Heaven. I always wished I’d had Flannelgraph props, but instead I drew a lot of pictures on wide-ruled notebook paper.

About this time, my ideas about Heaven also came from other non-church sources such as library books, comics, cartoons, and movies. For example, in my young understanding of angelology, I learned that angels:

• were sometimes fancy ladies (this made sense considering the wardrobe)

• or jolly old angel men who got their wings when bells ring (I loved that movie!)

• might have fat valentine babies responsible for dating (Good to know. You know. For the future.)

• could sometimes be lovely women in charge of overseeing Christmas trees

• were transformed people like the apostle Peter who guards Heaven’s gate and decides who to let in. (Wait. We reapply? And then become angels?) What a can of worms that cartoon opened.

• sing. In white robes. Forever. (Do we have to wear pajamas? Is this optional? I can’t sing. Even if I could I don’t think I want to be in a choir forever.)

Eventually I put away childish things. I graduated to the adult church service and teaching, and had read enough of the Bible myself to know that angels are not fancy ladies, or old guys without wings, or even valentine babies, and Peter isn’t stationed at the gate. (Silly cartoons. He’s obviously in the choir with everyone else.) I also realized that Heaven was not sitting on clouds. It is “up” somewhere. Nobody knows where. I figured that if you have enough faith, this should not bother you.

The white robe issue? That is in the Bible. So, permanent pajamas seemed inevitable. But! I found out that in Heaven we do not sing forever. (Whew!) We also sit at the Lord’s feet and worship Him forever! And that is the ultimate desire of every Christian. Right?

So, I thought, Heaven is pretty much a church service that never ends?

I'll tell you a secret. Don't tell anyone...

That did not sound great to me.

There. I said it.

The only thing I could figure was that by the time I grew old I'd either be too tired to want to do anything sing in a choir, or I’d be transformed into a holier person who would love this idea. I was losing the wonder of my beloved Flannelgraph Heaven. All I had left was my hope that it would all work out in The End. And I tried not to worry about it.

As far as my eternal future went, faith in my faith worked for me. For the most part. Until one day when I needed to lean hard on my knowledge and hope of Heaven. That’s when my trouble started. 

Unglued

Intro Triptych 2 of 3

orange bucket ©k.j.doogan

There are so many things that can unglue your security in this life, but there is one thing that topples the rest:

Death.

Death has a unique way of cracking us to the core, and opening up our hearts and minds to see who we are and what is essential. People universally consider their foundational belief system, and either look away, look for answers, rest assured, or fall apart.

I’ve weathered the heart-breaking deaths of several important people in my life. This is a story about about three of them. Each incident has a young child at its heart, and each one cracked me to the core and sent me scrambling to learn about Heaven, hope and eternity. 

One

I have a child in Heaven, who might be a little crabby about the name we chose.

We had names picked out for our future children by the time we’d been dating a month. Six names, all beginning with the letter J. Five years later we were married, and happily on our way to J#1.

It was the end of my first trimester when the plan unraveled. I remember the pain in my abdomen that began the miscarriage as if it were an hour ago. Sharp and deep like lightning. It felt like something was dropping out of me that should not be dropping out of me. I ran to the bathroom as the pain continued to strike. There was so much blood. I broke into a sweat as the room pitched like a rowboat in a storm.

I have no recollection of getting to the hospital. My next memory is laying on a hospital bed in a baby-blue tile hallway. My gynecologist was a huge man with a no-nonsense bedside manner, yet that night he was gentle and fatherly. He explained that the baby had become unattached from the womb and probably died a week prior. “These things happen,” he explained, “especially with a first pregnancy. You can try again in three months." He squeezed my hand.

It seemed that I blinked and the room was now white tile. A blue shower cap appeared on the doctor’s head. He smiled at me, nodded at the anesthesiologist and said, “Count backward from 100, sweetheart.”

“One hundred. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight...” When I woke up, my baby was gone.

Let me tell you something. There is no empty like that kind of empty.

We didn’t think to ask to take our baby home with us until we were already back home. My husband called the doctor but was told that kind of thing it isn’t done. The fetus had already been disposed of properly.

Disposed of properly. Those words would reverberate for a very long time.

We asked the gender of the baby, and the doctor explained that it was too early to tell. I had nothing. I didn’t even know if our firstborn was a girl or boy to solidify an identity.

We wanted to name our little girl or boy. We ran through our J’s and they didn’t feel right. We decided that we wanted the baby to have a family name—like genealogical glue, so my husband chose the name of his great grandmother: Margaret. 

 Two

“Your friend died.”

We were on staff at a Christian camping ministry early in our marriage. I was getting dinner ready in our tiny apartment kitchen/living-room, when my husband walked in and casually blasted me with the news.

“Died? Who?”

He said the name of a dear friend. “She apparently went into the hospital to have her baby, and something went wrong. The baby is okay.”

“Died? Wait. What?” I remember thinking the little apartment seemed to be out of air.

She was my best friend in junior high and much of high school. We were inseparable opposites. She was a tall, calm blonde and I was a short, not-as-calm brunette. She was my awkward-years co-dependent. We conquered braces, makeup, locker rooms, one-piece vertically striped gym uniforms, and contact lenses together. We were Diet Pepsi, cheese pizza, and chocolate shake addicts. 

We had code names for each other: Laurel & Hardy, George & Martha, Talls & Smalls. These came in handy for multiple daily secret-triangle-fold notes. There was that one time when one of us (me) dropped a note detailing current boy-crushes under her class desk in 4th hour Math. That same desk was occupied by the much-older, much-cooler boy that one of us (me) liked during 5th hour. He kindly returned the badly refolded note. And that was the last time we signed real names.

We became drivers, dieters, Glamour Magazine devotees. We met and figured out our first loves.

And then somewhere along the line we drifted apart.

I don’t really remember how that happened. I think it was because of the great divide of high school classes, combined with boyfriend life—and different career paths, maybe? I don’t really know.

But a few months before my husband’s not-so-gentle announcement, I received a letter from Laurel/George/Talls. Out of the blue. She said that she missed our friendship and would like to rekindle it.

I must have read that letter three times in a row, and I think I danced with it once. I would write her back immediately. (Long distance phone calls were not in the budget.) However, busyness overtook excitement and good intentions, and I didn’t get to it right away. And then that lovely letter went in my to-do basket, where it accumulated a little bit of dust.

I had no idea there was an expiration date.

 Three

I answered the phone to hear someone weeping uncontrollably. A close friend attempted garbled words and I held on while she worked to compose herself. I felt like a nightmare game show wheel was spinning, and I was waiting to find out on which really bad news slot it would finally stop.

Finally, she composed herself enough to make words, and explained in broken sentences that a mutual friend “…went in to get the baby up. Thought she was standing in the corner of her crib. Window-blind cord around her neck. Couldn’t revive her. She’s gone.”

It takes a minute to process that kind of information to be able to think forward. A very bad minute.

These were salt-of-the-earth people—responsible, loving and attentive parents. And they adored their daughters. I remember seeing that child’s beautiful bedroom for the first time and thinking: my goodness. This feels like a castle turret.

I was dumbfounded. I reviewed every thing I thought I might say and came up with nothing.

I’ll tell you what I knew not to say. I knew not to say something about the sovereignty of God, or that the baby was in a better place, or that there would be other children in their future. Pretty much, for a while, the best thing to say is nothing. You just listen, and be ready to support however you can while the family tries to walk through their reasonable facsimile of Hell.

The only thing that eventually even remotely helped me when I lost my baby was the fact that we would have our child back in Heaven. 

But you know what? Even when I could say that, I couldn’t back it up with anything solid. I only knew biblical generalities about Heaven. They needed something concrete: they needed tangible facts about hope to survive. And I came to the terrible realization that none of my general knowledge of Heaven was enough, and at best it seemed trite when reality turned brutal.

I knew the Bible said that we were supposed to set our minds on Heaven—but on what exactly? Did it even tell us what that meant? I desperately needed to figure it out. I determined that I would never again face something like this without knowing what I was talking about.

And so, my sojourn to find out what the Bible really said about Heaven began. 

 ***

Please Note: According to the U.S. Product Safety Commission, more than 800 children have died in recent years* from becoming entangled in a window cord. Many more have been seriously injured. For more information, or to see what you can do to help, visit Parents for Window Blind Safety.  (*retrieved in 2018)

The Things Above

Intro Triptych 3 of 3

Since you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth.   Colossians 3:1-2

bookshop hunting ©k.j.doogan

 Early 1990s B.A.E. (Before Amazon Era)

So, if you want to find more out about Heaven, where would you look? The local Christian bookstore, right? Because any excuse to go to a bookstore is a good one.

I walked up to the June Cleaver lookalike at the counter. “Excuse me. Where are your books on Heaven?”

She glanced at me over purple plastic half-frame readers. “You mean on the end times?”

“No. On Heaven.”

“Astronomy?”

“No?” Astronomy?

“You mean like God’s home?”

“That’s the one.”

“Adult or a children’s book?”

“Adult.”

She furrowed her brow, put her finger to her lips, drew her breath through her nose deeply, held it, mentally calculated, exhaled, and then answered, “What’s this for?”

“I have friends who lost a child and I want to be able to talk to them about Heaven.”

“So, a book about death and dying?”

“No. Not specifically. A general theological book. I want to study what the Bible teaches about Heaven. For other reasons as well.”

“Ah.” She squinted. “So, angels, and that sort of thing.”

“Uh. Well. Sort of. More broad, really.”

“Uh huh.” She pulled off her glasses and stared into the airspace over the shelves, then walked around her desk and said, “Follow me. Let’s see what we can find.”

I followed Mrs. Cleaver as she wove through the stacks, intermittently stopping, running her pointer finger back and forth across the shelves as if she were speed-reading a page. “No. Noooo. Nope… Huh! You’d think there’d be something,” she said.  We stopped at a pamphlet rack where there were several HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN! leaflets. She raised her eyebrows and looked at me hopefully. I shook my head. She tapped her nose with the purple glasses. “Let’s look at Prophecy.”

“Okay, but I really wanted something about the current Heaven.”

“I don’t think we have the current Heaven.” I hoped she was referring to literature.

 “Okay, Prophecy,” I conceded. I followed her to a rear aisle situated under a florescent light that seemed to be fluttering on its last dying watt.

“Here you go.” She dropped me off mid-step and headed back to her register. “Let me know if you need anything else,” her voice trailed behind her.

The shelf was sparsely stocked, and books were either sensational headline grabbing, earth exploding paperbacks about a late-great-planet, or fist-thick, dusty hardcover commentaries on biblical prophetic books. Was it possible that there were no books on Heaven? The light sizzled and blinked. This seemed wrong, like a bizarre alternate reality. I half expected Rod Serling to walk out from behind the stack to introduce a Twilight Zone episode. Enter one ordinary Christian woman seeking another dimension. A heavenly one. Is it lost? Forgotten? Or is it…non-biblical? [creepy music] You’ve just crossed over into—The Biblical Twilight Zone. Sizzle. Blink.

There was nothing here for me. I thanked June and left.

Next stop: a nearby church. Surely I’d find Heaven information there. I stopped in and asked if I could have a few minutes. The pastor cheerfully waved me in, and pointed to the chair in front of his desk. I sat down and recounted the bookshop story, thinking that we’d have a chuckle over the whole ordeal. He sat at his desk quietly, with his hands folded until the end of my tale. There was an awkward pause. When he didn’t speak, I cleared my throat and continued, “So, I was wondering if you could recommend something for me to study.”

“Well, the Bible doesn't really tell us much about Heaven.”

“I…don’t…see how that’s possible.”

“There are few references about the physical place, so it’s something that we take on faith.”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“Our ways aren’t always His,” he leaned back into his chair and smiled reassuringly. 

On my way out, I checked to see if Rod Serling was hiding in the narthex. He was not. I headed home, feeling absolutely lost.

At home, I sat at my desk, pulled out my study Bible and mindlessly flipped through the pages. Was it true? Did the Bible not talk about Heaven? Colossians 3 said to set your mind on Heaven. I thought: Okay, well, that’s frustrating. What are we supposed to set our mind on? Clouds? Stars? Where did the idea for the flannelgraph Heaven castle come from?

I stopped flipping, sighed heavily, then glanced down. A verse in front of me came into focus. I read it, leaned forward and reread it.

Call to me and I will answer you and I will tell you great and mighty things which you do not know. Jeremiah 33:3, NASB

“Are you talking to me?” I read it again. “Okay, God. I’m going to take you up on this. Can you do this—I mean, will you? Please tell me great and mighty things about Heaven that I don’t know!”

Almost immediately, it occurred to me that I should pull out my Gulliver-sized exhaustive concordance and look up every passage that included the word Heaven. Eventually I started highlighting the corresponding passages in blue pencil in my Bible. Then I started looking for other related words: eternal, glory, reward…the list grew. That prayer was my preface to what would become a decades-long Heaven study.

Does the Bible talk about Heaven? Now, listen. I’m going to tell you something amazing: The Bible talks about Heaven—a lot. That single word is mentioned more than 600 times. Heaven is like the golden thread that runs throughout the tapestry of the Word!

And you know what? The biblical text wouldn’t turn out to be my only Heaven resource after all. I eventually found many books and sermons authored by teachers and pastors. Sadly, most of them were found by hunting them down in old antique-book shops. It seems that prior generations of believers put a much greater emphasis on studying their eternal home. At the eve of the 19th century you can see the doctrine starting to wane and fewer books published. In the 1877 edition of The New Sermons of D.L. Moody, the famous evangelist pulls no punches when he tries to refocus his listeners:

“Men who say that Heaven is a speculation have not read their Bibles…there are allusions scattered all through it… If we want to get men to fix their hearts and attention upon Heaven, we must get them to read more about it. I would find nothing about that place that wouldn’t interest me… I call your attention to this truth: Heaven is just as much a place as Chicago.”

In fact, D.L. Moody was famous for calling people to focus on Heaven throughout his ministry.

With the invention of eBay, I was able to find more out-of-print Heaven books. As the internet expanded, so did the resources—though hunting in musty antique bookshops will always be my favorite way to find Heaven book treasures.

When our daughters grew up, they attended excellent Christian colleges. Their friends often had questions about Heaven (especially when experiencing the death of a loved one) but surprisingly, even there, the doctrine of Heaven didn’t seem to be addressed much. They often asked me to speak with their friends, and then eventually to teach small groups about what I’d learned. The small groups grew into larger groups, and eventually teaching about Heaven started to become an unintended ministry.

I better understand now why we are supposed to focus on Heaven. I find Heaven everywhere and can see facets of it in almost everything. It is my touchstone. It overflows into so much of what I think and do. Eternity is my context. I raised my daughters to set their hearts on Heaven. It undergirds my marriage. It is my filter, my survival secret. It never disappoints me, and never ceases to amaze me. 

But why was it so difficult to find?

Could it be that the last generation really has forgotten the doctrine of Heaven?  

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said:

“It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get the earth thrown in: aim at earth and you will get neither.”

Information about Heaven—the things above—was there all along. I just had to ask the Lord to show it to me and start looking. 

And so can you.