This past summer, I went with my family on a beach vacation. I had never been to this beach before, but my mother had, and she had told me that it was a good place to collect shells.
However, the beach was not a good place to collect shells; it was an incredible place to collect shells. I wandered the sands in awe of the gorgeous ocean treasures which lay in heaps along the seastrand as if prepared for my arrival. Rather than searching for ones worth keeping, I found myself deliberating about which shells I wanted to keep. I couldn't carry them all! I thought to myself, "I heard there were good shells, but I never imagined they would be as good as this."
My experience of discovering the beautiful shells led me to wonder if Christians will experience the same pleasant surprise upon entering the glory of heaven. C. S. Lewis once wrote that when we delight primarily in the pleasures of this world, we are like "an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." During my own prior holidays at the sea, I usually considered a shell hunt successful if I found a handful of unbroken shells. But had I known fully of the beauty that awaited me on this last trip, I would never have paid attention to the things I saw on other beaches.
God has already provided us a glimpse of future glory. Revelation 21 describes the beauty of the New Jerusalem, "adorned with every kind of jewel" (v. 19, ESV). We have the promise that in the end "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away" (Rev 21:4, ESV). Perhaps the most delightful thought is of God's unhindered shining glory, where " the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb" (Rev 21:23).
Will we fill our hands with the tiny, temporal shells of things on this earth? Or will we look ahead to the greater glory and beauty that awaits the children of God in eternity? When we reach heaven, I wonder if we will think, "I had heard of God's glory, but I never imagined it would be as good as this."