What is heaven like? The Bible answers with pictures rather than blueprints: a city, a garden, a wedding feast, a home with many rooms. Our minds strain to imagine a life we have never experienced.
These five stories about heaven and eternal life, retold in our own words, help us glimpse it from different angles, from a funeral fork to an ancient Egyptian scroll. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons, funerals or personal reflection.
Stories in this collection:
- Keep Your Fork: The Best Is Yet to Come
- Hot and Cold Stones: How a Blind Girl Learned Colour
- The Weighing of the Heart: Egypt's Dangerous Road to Eternity
- Ready for Y2K, but Ready for Eternity?
- The Long Spoons: A Parable of Heaven and Hell
Keep Your Fork: The Best Is Yet to Come
A widely shared story; its original author is unknown.
A woman had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and given about three months to live. As she began putting her affairs in order, she asked her pastor to visit her at home so they could talk about her final wishes.
She told him which hymns she wanted sung at her funeral, which passages of Scripture she would like read and which outfit she wanted to be buried in. She also asked to be buried with her favourite Bible.
Everything seemed settled, and the pastor was getting ready to leave, when she suddenly remembered something. There's one more thing, she said excitedly. This is very important. I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.
The pastor stood there, not quite knowing what to say. That surprises you, doesn't it? she asked. To be honest, he admitted, he was puzzled.
So she explained. In all her years of going to church suppers and shared meals, she said, she had noticed that when the plates were being cleared after the main course, someone would always lean over and say, Keep your fork. It was her favourite moment, because she knew that something better was coming: rich chocolate cake, perhaps, or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful.
So I want people to see me in the casket with a fork in my hand, she said, and I want them to wonder what the fork is for. Then I want you to tell them: Keep your fork. The best is yet to come.
The pastor's eyes filled with tears as he hugged her goodbye. He knew this might be one of the last times he would see her. But he also knew that she had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She knew that something better was coming.
At the funeral, people filed past the casket. They saw her lovely dress, her favourite Bible and the fork in her right hand. Again and again the pastor heard people ask each other, What's with the fork? And again and again he smiled.
During his sermon he told the congregation about his conversation with her, and what the fork meant to her. He told them he could not stop thinking about it, and that they probably would not be able to either. He was right. So the next time you reach for your fork, let it remind you, gently, that the best is yet to come.
It is a small thing, a fork. But it carries a large hope. For those who trust Christ, death is not the clearing away of the table at the end of the meal. It is the moment just before the best course is served, when the Host leans over and says that something far better is on its way.
Takeaway: For those who trust Christ, death is not the end of the meal but the moment the best course is served. As Paul put it, to depart and be with Christ "is better by far" (Philippians 1:23).
Source: Popular story; author unknown.
Hot and Cold Stones: How a Blind Girl Learned Colour
The 1985 film Mask tells the true story of Rocky Dennis, a teenager with a rare condition that severely altered the shape of his skull and face. Cher plays his tough, loving, motorcycle-riding mother.
Rocky has a gentle nature, and one summer he volunteers to work at a camp for blind children. Among people who cannot see his face, he hopes to be judged for who he is rather than what he looks like.
At the camp he falls for Diana, a girl who has been blind since birth. When Rocky talks about colours or clouds, she does not know what he means. She has never seen them, and words alone cannot explain them.
Rocky is determined to share these things with her, and he has a brilliant idea. He leads her into the kitchen and over to the refrigerator. He takes out a stone he has left there to chill and puts it in her hands. That, he tells her, is blue.
Then he takes her to the oven and gives her another stone, one that has been warming inside. She exclaims at how hot it is. That, says Rocky, is red. Finally he hands her a soft bundle of cotton wool. That, he says, is what clouds are like. The two of them grow excited as, for the first time, she feels she understands something of what colour and clouds are.
Of course, she still cannot see colours and clouds as they really are. But by comparing them to things she already knows, she gains a real sense of what they are like.
When it comes to describing realities beyond our experience, the Bible takes a similar approach. How could we possibly understand exactly what heaven and eternal life will be like, when we have never experienced that kind of life? So Scripture paints pictures from things we already know: a brilliant city, a beautiful garden, a wedding feast, a home with many rooms. They are not literal blueprints, but like Diana with her warm and cool stones, we gain a true sense of what is coming, and that is enough.
Takeaway: The Bible describes heaven the same way, using things we know, a city of light, a garden, a banquet, to point to a reality we have not yet seen. We do not get a photograph, but we get enough to long for it.
Source: Mask (1985), directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
The Weighing of the Heart: Egypt's Dangerous Road to Eternity
The pyramids of Egypt are among the most famous structures in the world, and most people know that they served as burial places for the pharaohs. But archaeologists tell us that preparing for death mattered right across ancient Egyptian society, not only to its kings.
For the Egyptians, the road to eternal life was full of dangers, demons and false paths. A soul had to be well prepared to survive it. To help, the dead were buried with spells, instructions and advice from what we now call the Book of the Dead. Extracts were often written on coffins and tomb walls, and sometimes complete papyrus scrolls were placed in the tomb.
The final ordeal on the way to eternity was the weighing of the heart. In the hall of judgement, the dead person's heart was placed on a scale and weighed against a feather representing truth and justice. Those who passed the test were welcomed by the god Osiris into the land of the gods. But a heart weighed down by wrongdoing was devoured by a fearsome monster, and the soul was lost.
Christian faith sees death very differently. The way to eternal life is not a dangerous maze to be navigated with secret spells; it has been opened by Christ. Our hearts may be weighed, but what will matter is not whether we have managed to be good enough, but whether we have trusted in Christ, who forgives our sin and welcomes us into his presence.
Takeaway: Christians also believe our lives will be weighed. But the good news is that the way to eternal life does not depend on spells or on a perfectly light heart. Jesus said, "I am the way" (John 14:6).
Source: Ancient Egyptian funerary texts; archaeological summaries of the Book of the Dead.
Ready for Y2K, but Ready for Eternity?
As 31 December 1999 approached, many people feared that the "millennium bug" would crash computers around the world and bring ordinary life to a halt. Television networks ran stories about people preparing for the worst.
One report featured a 45-year-old computer systems analyst from Oklahoma. He was convinced that when the clock struck midnight, the millennium bug would unleash a disaster of epic proportions. He predicted that the power grid would fail, communications networks would go down, financial markets would crash and banks would close. Planes and trains would stop, he said, and the whole world would be engulfed in panic, looting and riots.
But he was going to be ready. When midnight came, he and his family would be safely shut away in a bunker in Oklahoma. He had stockpiles of food and medicine, his own power and water supply, and newly learned skills for living off the land. He had only just learned how to tan a hide that year. And although he had never owned a gun before, he had bought several, along with plenty of ammunition.
He insisted that he was not an extremist or a doom-monger. He was simply ready.
As it turned out, the new year arrived with very few problems, partly thanks to years of careful work by programmers around the world. The bunker was not needed.
Christians are waiting for an event far greater than any computer bug: the return of Jesus Christ. The question is not whether we have stockpiled enough supplies, but whether we are ready to meet him.
Takeaway: People will go to extraordinary lengths to prepare for a disaster that may never come. Jesus calls us to be ready for something far more certain: his return, and eternity (Matthew 24:44). Are we ready?
Source: Reported on an Australian current affairs programme, 1999.
The Long Spoons: A Parable of Heaven and Hell
A parable told in many traditions, known as the allegory of the long spoons.
A man once asked the Lord to show him heaven and hell. I will show you hell first, said the Lord.
They went into a room with a large pot of stew in the middle. It smelled delicious. Around the pot sat people who were starving and desperate. Each of them held a spoon with a very long handle. The spoons could reach the pot, but because the handles were longer than their arms, nobody could get the food into their mouth. Their suffering was terrible.
Now I will show you heaven, said the Lord. They went into another room that looked exactly the same. There was the same pot of stew, and the people held the same long-handled spoons. But here everyone was well fed, talking and laughing together.
At first the man did not understand. It is simple, said the Lord. Here, they have learned to feed each other.
Takeaway: Heaven is not just a place but a way of living: love that serves others. We can begin practising it now.
Source: Traditional parable; versions appear in Jewish, Christian and Asian traditions.
Final thoughts
A fork, a warm stone, a scale, a bunker and a long spoon. Each story points beyond this life to a reality we can only glimpse, but one that changes how we live today.
For further reading, Sopranu reviews Augustine's The City of God and Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ.
If you are preparing a funeral message or simply wondering about heaven, we hope one of these stories helps. Keep your fork.
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
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