I bought a new toy recently. It is one of those purchases my wife thinks is very me. One of those not particularly exciting but theoretically very useful things. I got – are you ready for it – a car tyre inflator! I know, fantastic.
In truth, I wasn’t actually expecting much. I did a bit of research to find out which ones were rated highly. But, to be honest, I was expecting it to be a bit rubbish. I have been burnt on these things before. But I tried it out yesterday and it was brilliant. I was genuinely very surprised.
Obviously there is nothing inherently interesting about this purchase. But I was genuinely thrilled by the fact that something worked better than I had imagined it would. We live in a world where things routinely fail to work. Things promise so much and deliver so little. We have all been burnt by advertising and other such things, so often, that we almost always expect things to be worse than they claim to be. We are often pleased when something merely does what it claims to do. So, how exciting when something is better than even it claimed to be!
Whilst so much in this life is more disappointing than it claims to be, it caused me to think of how Heaven will almost certainly be better than the biblical advertising claims. Just as we ocassionally get something that is better than it claims, it is a small (a very small… microscopic really…) glimpse of the fact that one day things will be so much better than we can imagine. We can read the descriptions of Heaven in scripture and look forward to it, but we can be certain that whatever we can imagine, it will be far greater than even that.
In Ephesians 3:20 Paul says, ‘to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us’. Which suggests, if we can ask for it or think it in our minds, the Lord can do far more abundant and amazing things than we can even conceive of. And I am sure whatever we can conceive in our minds about Heaven, and whatever seems wonderful and amazing to us in our mind’s eye, it will be vastly more amazing even than that.
Which, I suppose, was a nice thought prompted by a mere tyre inflator.
I agree with your point on Heaven.
But I think another takeaway is how grateful we should be to God for capitalism and that we live in a free society. Investors risking their resources to make a better tyre inflater. Engineers racking their brains and charting new courses to come up with a better tyre inflater. Not necessarily because those people are selfless, but because God in His mercy created a world in which capitalism could exist, where the world is positive sum and self-interest leads to the common good.
I’m pretty sure my tyre inflator came from communist China 😬