When We All Get to Heaven....

...what a day of rejoicing that will be!"

That song goes on to speak about seeing Jesus -- the biggest, most important, and most wonderful reason that heaven will be a place of rejoicing. But there's another reason that has become increasingly real to me recently, and that is the hope of meeting and getting to know countless others in a way that is simply impossible in this life.

Last month, I went on a college tour that included visiting six different colleges in five different states and driving, along with my traveling companions Mr. H. and Ben, through a total of thirteen states. It was a very helpful trip that radically changed my opinions about a number of colleges and left me feeling very much more informed than I had been when I left. I enjoyed the enlightenment; I enjoyed the scenery; I enjoyed the amazingly delicious cafeteria food. But mostly I enjoyed the people.

I made a lot of new acquaintances on this trip: professors, admissions counselors, students, and occasionally other prospective students. In all probability, most of these will never be anything more than acquaintances, or even former acquaintances. In some cases I have absolutely no problem with this scenario. In some cases I welcome it. But I met quite a few people whose friendship I would love to have, and the majority of these people will be swept into the back of my memory along with everyone else.

I consider this to be a very sad thought. You see, I wish I could know everyone in the world who was worth knowing: everyone who could teach me something new, or who could learn something new with me; everyone with whom I could enjoy a good laugh, or a good story, or a good conversation. I wish I could know everyone who shares my interests, my passions, and my philosophy.

I wish I could know that professor at Hillsdale College whose passion, eloquence, and enthusiasm all combined to make him the perfect teacher. I would love to get to know those two students from Wheaton (one of whom was the oldest of five in a home-schooled family) with whom Ben and I discussed the origin of truth on the train into Chicago. I would really like to be friends with the admissions counselor at Bryan College, who emphasized that whatever college God leads me to will be the right one, and the visit coordinator at the same school, who gave her own testimony of how nothing is impossible with God. The list goes on. Those students at Patrick Henry, that professor at Geneva, that Admissions Counselor at Hillsdale -- I wish I could know them all.

The problem, of course, is that I can't.

I think one of the saddest things in life is the impossibility of knowing everyone who would be worth knowing. So many potential friendships must be sacrificed to mere earthly practicality. The friendships we do get to enjoy are wonderful, and I have no complaints about my own. But just as every friend is unique and irreplaceable, so no friendship is a perfect replacement for another, even if the seeds of the other friendship never turn into actual plants.

I have a theory: since everyone who accepts Jesus' sacrifice for his atonement will go to heaven, and since we will live there eternally, once we get there we will have all the time we want to get to know each other. No potential friendship will have to be set aside. Never again will we have to wonder what a relationship could have been. Not only will we be able to enjoy God completely, unimpeded by our fallen nature, but we will also be able to enjoy each other completely as well.

What a day of rejoicing that will be!

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Dragonfly on a Red Cardboard Box

I took this picture with a new lens I just bought, a Tamron 70-300mm lens with a macro function.  This photo is a composite of two different photos from the same perspective, using the better-focused part of each to make an in-focus whole.

My Wishlist Wishlist

As I was doing some shopping on Amazon.com today, carefully comparing some similar items and combing their reviews for useful information, I remembered a time when I used to do such things more frequently, albeit for a rather amusing purpose.

Way back in the early days of my relationship with the World Wide Web, when we paid $25 a month to get super-slow service from America Online, when e-mail was something of a novelty, and when things like Blogger and Facebook were only mystical concepts in the minds of the technological avantgarde - back then, in the dawn of my online experience, Amazon.com was my primary attraction to the internet. Strange though it may seem now, I spent hours on that site. In fact, I probably spent a rather large majority of my internet allowance perusing the world's biggest online store. And the irony is that I had no intention of buying anything. I was the ultimate Windows shopper.

My commitment to honesty compels me to admit that the simple joy of comparing the latest merchandise was not my only attraction to Amazon.com, per se. It wasn't all merely about finding out what was the best, the cheapest, or the best deal. Nor was it about just having fun, though of that I had much. No, I was a selfish little lad, as a retrospective glance at my ideas, misconceptions, and consequent action from that time would make sadly apparent.

I first learned about Amazon.com when Evan and Jill came over for dinner shortly after they had moved to New Hampshire. It's one of those random little memories that sticks in one's mind from his childhood for no explicable reason. Mama and Jill were talking about shopping, I think, and Jill asked if we had tried Amazon.com. I had heard of it - I think by that time it was already a pretty big company - but hadn't realized that WE could use it. I don't know exactly who I thought generally used it - probably rich people with fancy computers or college students who could sit down with only Notepad open and design a whole website (imagine!) - but that's beside the point. The point is that if Jill could shop at Amazon.com, so could I. Suddenly online shopping was a possibility, and I took my first opportunity to check it out.

Some time in the next few days, I opened my very own Amazon.com account. What excitement! And what bliss! I had already become the first member of my family to open a personal e-mail account, and to add "first Amazon.com member" to my resume cemented my reputation as the most tech-savvy member of the family.

But this was back in the days when pride had less appeal for me than materialism. Imagine my absolute delight when I learned three separate but related facts: Amazon sometimes overstocked and sold things for cheaper; Amazon asked what your birthday was; and Amazon let you create a wishlist. Clearly, Amazon users had only to report their DOB and ask for whatever they wanted, and the philanthropic managers of the good website would send you presents (if, of course, they happened to have more stuff than they really needed).

Well, from that moment it was my ambition to place all the overstocked merchandise I could find in my wishlist. I particularly desired a CD boombox and a digital camera, I remember, and I would fly around the electronics pages searching for whatever I thought was nice but unlikely to be extremely popular.

"This one looks nice. Memorex CD and tape player... with remote control! I doubt it will be overstocked, but I'll add it to my list just in case. Oh, here's a nice Sony... same features but way more money! No one will buy this! I'll add it..."

Birthday after birthday came and went, and though I watched the mail around those times with eager expectancy, my hopes for a complimentary gift from the wonderland behind my mother's inch-thick laptop screen were never realized. Nearly ten years later, I'm still waiting.

What you see...

…when you turn a 50mm lens around and, holding it face to face with your normal autofocus lens, look through the viewfinder of your Pentax K200D camera at the dead fly that’s lying on your bedside table: