Ernest Hemingway once wrote to his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald concerning heaven:

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.

Hemingway lived a most hedonistic life.  And that his assessment of heaven is carnal and fleshly should not surprise us.  The Bible says, “For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh” (Rom. 8:5).  Sadly, Hemingway’s heaven is nothing more than a place on earth.

However, his statement does challenge me to assess my view of heaven.  Do I view heaven as a place where I will find all my earthly pleasures met?  Do I think of heaven as a reality where I am living at the height of human imagination?  Or do I see it as the place where all my pleasures are completed in the beauty and glory of Christ?

If heaven is anything it is intimacy with Christ; where I know him even as he knows me.  It is a place where my rapture is in his glory and my redeemed mind is fixed on the wonders and beauty of the Redeemer.  I long for heaven, not because I will have a fishery to myself or houses populated with servants.  But because I will have Christ and Christ will have me.