If you like Jazz you might just like heaven

Jim Packer writes for all those who fear that heaven might just be a bit dull:

I have written with enthusiasm, for this everlasting life is something to which I look forward. Why? Not because I am out of love with life here—just the reverse! My life is full of joy, from four sources—knowing God, and people, and the good and pleasant things that God and men under God have created, and doing things which are worth while for God or others or for myself as God’s man. But my reach exceeds my grasp. My relationships with God and men are never as rich and full as I want them to be and I am always finding more than I thought was there in great music, great verse, great books, great lives and the great kaleidoscope of the natural order.

Jelly-Roll Morton sang of Jazz, “The more I have, the more I want, it seems”—and there are 1,001 things (including Morton’s own jazz) about which I find myself saying just that.

As I get older, I find that I appreciate God and people and good and lovely and noble things, more and more intensely; so it is pure delight to think that this enjoyment will continue and increase in some form (what form, God know, and I am content to wait and see), literally forever.

We cannot visualise heaven’s life and the wise man will not try. Instead, he will dwell on the doctrine of heaven, which is that there the redeemed find all their heart’s desire: joy with their Lord, joy with his people and joy in the ending of all frustration and distress and the supply of wants.

Often now we say in moments of great enjoyment, “I don’t want this ever to stop”—but it does. Heaven, however, is different. May heaven’s joys be yours and mine.