WHERE WILL I GO?
“Mom, is Grandma going to heaven?” Jill asked.
“What a thing to ask,” her mother wrinkled her nose. “Of course she is. Everybody loved Grandma. Grandma always thought of everybody else and always did nice things for others. If that doesn’t get you into heaven, I don’t know what will. Excuse me for a minute.” Her mom looked up over Jill’s head and extended her hand to greet a woman that just entered the funeral parlor. “Mrs. Louis, thank you for coming.”
Something still bothered Jill. She couldn’t explain the feeling and she needed to ask more questions. She walked over to her mother’s sister and husband who were also standing in the receiving line. “Aunty Caroline,” Jill said. “Do you think there’s a heaven?”
“Well of course there is honey,” Aunty Caroline said, “and we’re all going there some day.”
“How do you know that?” Jill asked.
“Well.” Aunty Caroline thought for a moment. “Did you ever kill anybody? Did you ever rob a bank? Do you go to church and say your prayers at night? If you are a good person then you’ll go to heaven. Oh, give me a second honey I have to say hi to Mrs. VanDenHaven.”
“Uncle Ted,” Jill said. “Is there a hell?”
“A hell? You mean like the place underground that’s on fire. I don’t believe it because I believe that everybody’s life right here on earth is their own personal h…” Uncle Ted didn’t finish because Aunty Caroline was staring at him with those eyes that she only used when she was mad at you, like the time her vase accidentally fell to the floor when Jill was standing next to it.
Aunty Caroline looked at Jill. “Jill honey, could you go out to my car and get my spearmint chewing gum on the dashboard.” Jill took the keys and walked out the front door to the sidewalk where she saw a man sitting on the curb with his head down.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Never better,” he said, “just doing a little reading.”
Jill couldn’t believe the part about him never being better because he looked terrible. On one side of his head his hair was all bunched up and on the other side it was all matted down. He had kind of a greasy face with some kind of dark smudges on his forehead and his hands were dirty, not gardening kind of dirt, but a permanent kind of dirt that didn’t look like it would ever come off. His shirt looked like it used to be red flannel but now it was just brown. His pants were very baggy and had big stains on the knees. His shoes didn’t match. His left was a dirty white sneaker and his left was a black shoe like Jill’s dad wore to the office. He was reading a book with a scuffed leather cover. “Are you reading a Bible?” She asked.
“Yep,” he said as he stood up.
He was very tall which surprised her for someone who she thought was so old. She had to tilt her head back to look at him. He looked down into Jill’s eyes and she felt compelled to look right into his eyes. Jill didn’t like to look at people’s eyes but she felt like she had to this time.
“I really like reading the book of John, chapter fourteen, verse six" he continued. "That one sentence explains how we..."
"I'm sorry sir but I have to get my aunt's gum" she interrupted.
"Isn't it too beautiful of a day to be in such a hurry?" he asked.
“I guess, but my Grandma died so it’s not such a great day for me.”
“Well death is a very confusing thing you know.” He said. “Did you spend a lot of time with your grandmother?”
“Yeah, she’d read me stories and play games and show me how to bake cookies.”
“Sounds like you were both blessed to have each other,” the stranger said.
“I guess.” Jill paused. “Can you answer a question? When someone is blessed, does that mean that they’re going to heaven?”
“That’s a very big question for such a little person,” he said. “Being blessed means that the ‘Creator of the Universe’ the ‘Great I Am’ has bestowed His graces upon you, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll spend eternity with him. In order to spend eternity with Him there’s something else that you have to do…”
“So my mom was right,” Jill interrupted. “You do have to do good things in order to get into heaven.”
“Just doing nice things for people won’t get you into heaven.” He said. “You can’t earn His blessings. You could never do enough things in your life to earn one single blessing. He gives them to you for free. But there is one thing you have to do…”
“I know what it is, it’s saying my prayers. My Dad said that if we don’t say our prayers every night that we’ll go where it’s always hot. And then he says, ‘and I don’t mean Phoenix’.”
“That’s not necessarily so,” he tried to explain, “because…”
“I know, because there really isn’t a hell. My uncle Ted says that he doesn’t think there is a hell…”
“Well,” the stranger started to explain, “there is a hell but ….”
“And,” Jill continued, “my teacher says there isn’t a heaven or hell or even a ‘creator’ because the world was created by evolution and that we need to take care of mother nature first.”
The stranger stopped talking and just looked into Jill’s eyes. As she looked into his eyes she felt as though all the questions she had were starting to be answered but she couldn’t explain how. She felt a little queasy in her stomach and wanted to leave.
“I have to go now,” she said.
“I know that.” He answered. “Some day I’ll see you at my house.”
“Do you live near here?” she asked. “If I did go to your house my mom would have to come along.”
“Your mother,” he said, “will be there too.”
“Jillian Louise! What are you doing just standing there?” Her mother asked her as she walked over.
“I was just talking,” Jill said.
“Talking to yourself?” her mother asked.
“No, I was talking to..” Jill stopped when she realized that the stranger was nowhere to be seen. “I was talking to some nice old man but now he’s gone.”
“Well all I see,” her mom said, “is you staring up at nothing 'cept the big blue sky above. So how about you getting your Aunt Caroline’s gum, and then back in line with us. We still have things to do.”
“I know there’s one thing I have to do,” Jill said.
“What’s that,” her mom asked.
“Do you know how to read the Bible?” Jill asked.
“Not really Jilly, our church does that for us,” her mom explained. “What do you want with the Bible?"
“To find out what the book of John, chapter fourteen, verse six says,” Jill said.