That’s the title of a 1964 Buck Owen’s song, and if you’ve ever heard it, you remember it. For a twangy country song it expresses plenty of pathos in the deep longing one has for their loved one. I remember that while and engaged and then first married I hoped my wife and I could/would die on the same day. But then when my mother died some 18 years later, one of the first thoughts I had at the time was, “I hope Dad doesn’t die right away.”
Till then, even after having kids, I hadn’t thought how bad it would be for kids to have both parents die on the same day just to be together again in heaven. And that’s what this blog is really about. Husband and wife together again, or not, in heaven.
It really appears to be as complicated as the unbelieving Sadducees made it out to be in their testing of Jesus about the seven-time married and windowed woman. Whose spouse would she be in the resurrection? And does Jesus say, “There are no married people in heaven” or just that there is no more marriages going on in heaven?
These thoughts were running through my mind as I was with my father picking out my mother’s and his tombstone. But I made no mention of them when my father had the stone engraved with “Together for Forever” and the date of their nuptials. How could I have to the man who just two weeks after meeting my mother had had her name tattooed on his arm? Even before marrying her he was that sure of their togetherness.
This week my wife and I will mark just three years shy of the number of years together my parents were graced with. Since 2001, they have been together again in heaven, but in what way?
I think George Macdonald, 19th century congregational minister, author, and poet has a good “take” on this. I only bought his books when I found out that both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien noted he was a big influence on them.
A husband and wife are in bed talking about dying. The husband says, “‘Well, I wish I could have you there with me, Janet, for I don’t know what I would do without you. I would feel lost up there without you, the one who knows the ways of the place.’
‘I know no more the ways of the place than yourself, Robert, although I’m thinking they’ll be very quiet and sensible seeing that there must be fine people there. It’s enough to me that I’ll be in the house of my Master’s Father; and my Master was well content to go to that house. But poor simple folks like ourselves will have no need to hang our head and look like fools that don’t know manners. Babies aren’t expected to know the ways of a great house that they’ve never been into in their lives before.’
‘It’s not just that that troubles me, Janet. It’s more that I’ll be expected to sing and look happy and I don’t know how it’ll be possible with you not within my sight or my call or my hearing.’
‘Do you believe this, Robert – that we are one in Christ Jesus?'”
Robert, troubled, replies that while he doesn’t deny anything in the Bible, there is many a thing that he doesn’t know whether he believes on his own or that he knows she believes and it’s the same to him as if he believed himself.
Janet replies, “‘Well, you’re just where I am on that, Robert. I comfort myself with the hope that we’ll know the thing there, that maybe we’re just trying to believe here. We know that the two of us are one, Robert. Now we know from Scripture that the Master came to make one forever those who were two; and we know also that He conquered death. So He would never let death make the one He had made one into two again – it’s not reasonable.'”
The topic shifts some; then Robert replies, “‘But Janet! You know there’s no marriage in heaven.’
‘Who’s talking about marriage? Is that to say we won’t mean more to one another than other folks up there? Just because marriage is not the way of this country doesn’t mean that there’s nothing better to take its place!'”
Janet goes on to say that Jesus only spoke on the subject because someone else brought it up. It wasn’t a subject He spoke on, and probably wouldn’t had not unbelievers asked Him about it. Janet concludes the subject by saying that she must have been one good woman if seven men wanted her. “‘But I’m sure she’ll know well enough which one of them was her own.'” And she cautions that such a subject can easily lead to unfitting joking, “‘and it’s not fitting to joke about such a serious subject'” (Sir Gibbie, 95-97).
And if there is a joke to be found in heaven on this matter, I’m sure it will be on us, and we will be the ones laughing with joy the way Abraham did when were “Together again!”
