August 25, 1999
DOWN HOME:
Will clothes be folded
when the Lord returns?
___Who knows what eschatology has to do with green beans and pork tenderloin, but we were ruminating about the rapture the other night at the dinner table.
___You know what I'm talking about--that moment at the end of this age, when all God's people will be caught up to meet the Lord Jesus in the clouds.
___Those kinds of clouds usually dominate the heavens during late afternoons in the summertime, when the falling sun sets monster thunderheads aglow. That's when someone (usually me) will say something like, "Now, there's a Jesus-coming-back cloudif ever I've seen one."
MARV KNOX
Editor
___Someone at church or school must've said something about Tim LaHaye's book "Left Behind," an end-times thriller. That got us started.
___"I don't know if I trust that book," Molly, our eagle-eyed 12-year-old observed. "It's not very consistent."
___"What do you mean?" asked her sister, Lindsay, 15.
___"Well, I understand it says different things about the clothes of people who were raptured," Molly replied. "Sometimes, it says they were in the exact spot and situation where the people were when they were raptured, like sitting in a chair. Other times, it says they were neatly folded. Inconsistent."
___"That makes sense to me," their mother, Joanna, said. "Just think about your daddy and me. I'd just go straight up. Who cares about clothes? But your daddy would say: 'Hold on, Lord. I've got to fold my clothes first."
___Makes sense to me, too. Didn't Jesus say something like, "Whatsoever is folded on earth shall be folded in heaven"?
___Anyway, the great rapture-clothes debate got Lindsay to thinking about what might or might not be left behind.
___"Do you think the screws in my jaw might be left behind?" she queried. She had surgery 20 months ago, and six silver screws hold her chin in place. "I'd hate to go to heaven with my jaw flopping," she teased.
___Molly wanted to know if certain other cosmetic--what shall we say?--"enhancements" might be left behind. "Some people could look pretty silly in heaven," she guessed.
___That raises a question about "heavenly bodies." If they have any relation to the bodies we've had on earth, do we get to choose exactly which body from which period of our lives that we may keep for eternity?
___If so, I want my 17-year-old body back. That's when I had the most hair, the skinniest waist and the strongest legs. Thanks to modern medicine, I might live past 100, and I sure don't want to have to store my teeth in a jar every night for eternity.
___Somehow, "when we all get to heaven," I don't think I'll care about teeth. Or hair.
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