Departed, The—Comfort about – Charles Spurgeon

WE shall enter into no questions now about whether Heaven is a place, and where it is, or whether it be a state merely: it is enough for us that where Jesus is there his people are—not some of them on lower seats, or sitting outside, or in lower rooms, but they are all where he is. That will certainly content me, and if there be any degrees in glory you who want the high ones may have them. The lowest degree that I can perceive in Scripture is, “that they may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory,” and that lowest degree is as high as my most vivid imagination can carry me. Here is enough to fill our souls even to the brim. And now do you sorrow? Do you not almost blame your tears when you learn that your beloved ones are promoted to such blissful scenes? Why, mother, did you ever wish for your child a higher place than that it should be where Jesus is? Husband, by the love you bore your wife, you cannot grudge her the glory into which she has entered. Wife, by the deep devotion of your heart to him who is taken from you, you could not wish to have detained him a moment from the joy in which his soul now triumphs with his Lord. If he were gone to some unknown land, if you could stand on life’s brink, and hear the roaring billows of a dread mysterious ocean, and say, “My dear one has gone, I know not where, to be tossed like a waif or stray upon yonder tempestuous sea,” Oh, then you might mix your own tears with the brine of that ocean. But you know where they are, you know with whom they are, and you can form some idea by the joy of Christ’s presence here on earth what must be their bliss above.