church. The man who had passed away wasn’t a member of our
congregation, but people in town who don’t attend services regularly often
want a church funeral for a loved one. Sometimes the deceased is a friend
or relative of a church member.
Colton must have heard Sonja and me discussing the upcoming service
because he walked into the front room one morning and tugged on my
shirttail. “Daddy, what’s a funeral?”
I had done several funerals at church since Colton was born, but he was
at that age where he was starting to become more interested in how and
why things work.
“Wel , buddy, a funeral happens when someone dies. A man here in
town died, and his family is coming to the church to say good-bye to him.”
Instantly, Colton’s demeanor changed. His face fel into serious lines,
and he stared fiercely into my eyes. “Did the man have Jesus in his heart?”
My son was asking me whether the man who had died was a Christian
who had accepted Christ as his Savior. But his intensity caught me off
guard. “I’m not sure, Colton,” I said. “I didn’t know him very wel .”
Colton’s face bunched up in a terrible twist of worry. “He had to have
Jesus in his heart! He had to know Jesus or he can’t get into heaven!”
Again, his intensity surprised me, especial y since he didn’t even know
this man. I tried to comfort him as best I could. “I’ve talked to some of the
family members, and they told me he did,” I said.
Colton didn’t seem entirely convinced, but his face relaxed a bit.
“Wel . . . okay,” he said and walked away.
For the second time in a couple of weeks, I thought, Man, those Sunday
school teachers sure are doing a good job!
That weekend, Sonja dressed Cassie and Colton in their Sunday best,
and we headed the half block down to the church to get ready for the
funeral. As we pul ed up in the SUV, I saw the Liewer Funeral Home
hearse parked outside. Inside, we found the burnished oak casket
standing off to one side of the foyer.
Two sets of open doorways led from the foyer into the sanctuary where
the family was gathering for the “flower service.” Before moving to Imperial,
I’d never heard of a flower service, but now I think it’s a real y nice idea.
The family gathers before the funeral service, and the funeral director
points out each plant, wreath, and flower arrangement, explains who sent it,
and reads aloud any message of sympathy attached. (“These beautiful
purple azaleas come to you in loving memory from the Smith family.”)
The pastor is supposed to be in the flower service. I peeked into the
sanctuary and caught the funeral director’s eye. He nodded, indicating they
were ready to begin. I turned to gather Colton and Cassie, when Colton
pointed to the casket. “What’s that, Daddy?”
I tried to keep it simple. “That’s the casket. The man who died is inside
it.”
Suddenly, Colton’s face gathered into that same knot of intense concern.
He slammed his fists on his thighs, then pointed one finger at the casket
and said in a near shout, “Did that man have Jesus?!”
Sonja’s eyes popped wide, and we both glanced at the sanctuary
doorway, terrified the family inside could hear our son.
“He had to! He had to!” Colton went on. “He can’t get into heaven if he
didn’t have Jesus in his heart!”
Sonja grabbed Colton by the shoulders and tried to shush him. But he
was not shushable. Now nearly in tears, Colton twisted in her arms and
yel ed at me, “He had to know Jesus, Dad!”
Sonja steered him away from the sanctuary, hustling him toward the front
doors of the church, with Cassie fol owing. Through the glass doors, I could
see Sonja bent down talking to Cassie and Colton outside. Then Cassie
block toward home.
I didn’t know what to think. Where was this sudden concern over whether
a stranger was saved, whether he “had Jesus in his heart,” as Colton put it,
coming from?
I did know this much: Colton was at that age where if something popped
into his head, he’d just blurt it out. Like the time I took him to a restaurant in
Madrid, Nebraska, and a guy with real y long, straight hair walked in, and
Colton asked loudly whether that was a boy or a girl. So we kept Colton
away from funerals for a while if we didn’t know for sure the deceased was
a Christian. We just didn’t know what he would say or do.
TWELVE
EYEWITNESS TO HEAVEN
It wasn’t until four months after Colton’s surgery, during our Fourth of July
trip to meet our new nephew, that Sonja and I final y got a clue that
something extraordinary had happened to our son. Sure, there had been a
string of quirky things Colton had said and done since the hospital.
Colton’s insisting we pay Dr. O’Hol eran because Jesus used the doctor to
help “fix” him. His statement that Jesus “told” him he had to be good. And
his strenuous, almost vehement funeral performance. But rushing by as
brief scenes in the busyness of family life, those things just seemed . . .
wel , kind of cute. Except for the funeral thing, which was just plain weird.
But not supernatural weird. It wasn’t until we were driving through North
Platte on the way to South Dakota that the lights came on. You’l remember
I was teasing Colton a little as we drove through town.
“Hey, Colton, if we turn here, we can go back to the hospital,” I said. “Do
you wanna go back to the hospital?”
It was that conversation in which Colton said that he “went up out of” his
body, that he had spoken with angels, and had sat in Jesus’ lap. And the
way we knew he wasn’t making it up was that he was able to tel us what
we were doing in another part of the hospital: “You were in a little room by
yourself praying, and Mommy was in a different room and she was praying
and talking on the phone.”
Not even Sonja had seen me in that little room, having my meltdown with
God.
Suddenly, there in the Expedition on our holiday trip, the incidents of the
past few months clicked into place like the last few quick twists in a
Rubik’s Cube solution: Sonja and I realized that this was not the first time
Colton had let us know something amazing had happened to him; it was
only the most clear-cut.
By the time we got to Sioux Fal s, we were so busy getting to know our
cute baby nephew, catching up on family news, and visiting the waterfal
that we didn’t have a lot of time to discuss Colton’s strange revelations. But
during the quiet moments before sleep, a flood of images tumbled through
my mind—especial y those horrible moments I’d spent in that tiny room at
the hospital, raging against God. I thought I had been alone, pouring out my
anger and grief in private. Staying strong for Sonja. But my son said he
had seen me . . .
Our mini-vacation passed without any new disasters, and we returned to
Imperial in time for me to preach on Sunday. The fol owing week, Sonja
&
nbsp; and her friend Sherri Schoenholz headed to Colorado Springs for the
Pike’s Peak Worship Festival, a conference on church music ministry. That
left just me and the kids at home.
Like any prudent tornado-belt family, we have a basement below our
one-story home. Ours is semifinished, with a smal office and a bathroom
that lead off a large, multipurpose, rumpus room area. Colton and I were
down there one evening, as I worked on a sermon against the comforting
background of my preschooler’s action-figure war.
Colton was three years and ten months old at the time of his surgery, but
in May we had celebrated his birthday, so he was now official y four. A big
boy. The little party we had thrown was al the more special since we’d
nearly lost him.
I don’t remember exactly what day of the week it was when Colton and I
were hanging out in the basement. But I do remember that it was evening
and that Cassie wasn’t there, so she must’ve been spending the night with
a friend. As Colton played nearby, my attention drifted to our Arby’s
conversation about Jesus and the angels. I wanted to probe deeper, get
him talking again. At that age, little boys don’t exactly come up and offer
you long, detailed histories. But they wil answer direct questions, usual y
with direct answers. If Colton real y had a supernatural encounter, I certainly
didn’t want to ask him leading questions. We had taught Colton about our
faith al his life. But if he had real y seen Jesus and the angels, I wanted to
become the student, not the teacher!
Sitting at my makeshift desk, I looked over at my son as he brought
Spider-Man pouncing down on some nasty-looking creature from Star
Wars. “Hey, Colton,” I said. “Remember when we were in the car and you
talked about sitting on Jesus’ lap?”
Stil on his knees, he looked up at me. “Yeah.”
“Wel , did anything else happen?”
He nodded, eyes bright. “Did you know that Jesus has a cousin? Jesus
told me his cousin baptized him.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said. “The Bible says Jesus’ cousin’s name is John.”
Mental y, I scolded myself: Don’t offer information. Just let him talk . . .
“I don’t remember his name,” Colton said happily, “but he was real y
nice.”
John the Baptist is “nice”?!
Just as I was processing the implications of my son’s statement—that he
had met John the Baptist—Colton spied a plastic horse among his toys
and held it up for me to look at. “Hey, Dad, did you know Jesus has a
horse?”
“A horse?”
“Yeah, a rainbow horse. I got to pet him. There’s lots of colors.”
Lots of colors? What was he talking about?
“Where are there lots of colors, Colton?”
“In heaven, Dad. That’s where al the rainbow colors are.”
That set my head spinning. Suddenly I realized that up until that point, I’d
been toying with the idea that maybe Colton had had some sort of divine
visitation. Maybe Jesus and the angels had appeared to him in the
hospital. I’d heard of similar phenomena many times when people were as
near death as Colton had been. Now it was dawning on me that not only
was my son saying he had left his body; he was saying he had left the
hospital!
“You were in heaven?” I managed to ask.
“Wel , yeah, Dad,” he said, as if that fact should have been perfectly
obvious.
I had to take a break. I stood and bounded up the stairs, picked up the
phone, and dialed Sonja’s cel . She picked up and I could hear music and
singing in the background. “Do you know what your son just said to me?!”
“What?” she shouted over the noise.
“He told me he met John the Baptist!”
“What?”
I summarized the rest for her and could hear the amazement in her voice
on the other end of the line.
She tried to press me for details, but the worship conference hal was
too loud. Final y we had to give up. “Cal me tonight after dinner, okay?”
Sonja said. “I want to know everything!”
I hung up and leaned against the kitchen counter, processing. Slowly, I
began to wrap my mind around the possibility that this was real. Had our
son died and come back? The medical staff never gave any indication of
that. But clearly, something had happened to Colton. He had authenticated
that by tel ing us things he couldn’t have known. It dawned on me that
maybe we’d been given a gift and that our job now was to unwrap it, slowly,
careful y, and see what was inside.
Back downstairs, Colton was stil on his knees, bombing aliens. I sat
down beside him.
“Hey, Colton, can I ask you something else about Jesus?”
He nodded but didn’t look up from his devastating attack on a little pile
of X-Men.
“What did Jesus look like?” I said.
Abruptly, Colton put down his toys and looked up at me. “Jesus has
markers.”
“What?”
“Markers, Daddy . . . Jesus has markers. And he has brown hair and he
has hair on his face,” he said, running his tiny palm around on his chin. I
guessed that he didn’t yet know the word beard. “And his eyes . . . oh, Dad,
his eyes are so pretty!”
As he said this, Colton’s face grew dreamy and far away, as if enjoying
a particularly sweet memory.
“What about his clothes?”
Colton snapped back into the room and smiled at me. “He had purple
on.” As he said this, Colton put his hand on his left shoulder, moved it
across his body down to his right hip then repeated the motion. “His
clothes were white, but it was purple from here to here.”
Another word he didn’t know: sash.
“Jesus was the only one in heaven who had purple on, Dad. Did you
know that?”
In Scripture, purple is the color of kings. A verse from the gospel of Mark
flashed through my mind: “His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than
anyone in the world could bleach them.”1
“And he had this gold thing on his head . . .” Colton chirped on
enthusiastical y. He put both hands on top of his head in the shape of a
circle.
“Like a crown?”
“Yeah, a crown, and it had this . . . this diamond thing in the middle of it
and it was kind of pink. And he has markers, Dad.”
My mind reeled. Here I’d thought I was leading my child gently down this
conversational path but instead, he’d grabbed the reins and gal oped
away. Images from Scripture tumbled through my mind. The Christophany,
or manifestation of Christ, in the book of Daniel, the appearance of the
King of kings in Revelation. I was amazed that my son was describing
Jesus in pretty much human terms—then amazed that I was amazed, since
our whole faith revolves around the idea that man is made in God’s image
and Jesus both came to earth and returned to heaven as a man.
I knew by heart al the Bible stories we’d read him over the years, many
from the Arch series, Bible storybooks I’d had as a child. And I knew our
church’s Sunday school lessons a
nd how simplified they are in the
preschool years: Jesus loves you. Be kind to others. God is good. If you
could get a preschooler to take away just one three- or four-word concept