how joyful is it when you're dancing with someone you've longed to dance with your whole life?

​When you think of heaven, what do you think of? Seriously - I'd love to know.

I think for a long time I thought heaven would be a place where I'd receive all the things I'd longed for in life but never had. Like I'd walk through a gate and someone would wave a magic wand and I'd suddenly be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.

For a long time, the way I thought of heaven was probably the biggest sign of my emotional and spiritual immaturity. I was letting my worldly desires and emotions drive the way I saw life, what I wanted from life and how I responded to the events of life.

As Christians, I suppose one of the things we wonder about most is heaven and eternal life.

Did you know Jesus defined eternal life for us? In the book of John 17:3 - Jesus says:

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

It's important to know, in the bible, most of the time when it is talking about "knowing" someone, it's not talking about an intellectual knowledge about someone but rather a deep and meaningful relationship with them.

That is certainly what Jesus is talking about here. He's not saying eternal life is memorizing our bible, he's saying it's becoming intimately connected to the God and Jesus who are in it.

What Jesus is also saying is eternal life isn't a future event. It's a here and now opportunity. If we think of eternal life as a future cure for all that ails us now, we're going to miss the very present joy eternal life is meant to offer.

There was a point in my life when I thought "salvation" was knowing Jesus died for my sins and life was suddenly about hanging on and battling my worldly emotions and desires - with a little extra heavenly help - until the day heaven arrived.

And you know, that kind of thinking left me as stuck as I was before I found "salvation."

I had a friend who once who told me the first thing she wanted to do when she got to heaven was dance with Jesus. She didn't describe that as a high school prom type dance, but more a dance of gratitude. She described it as a chance to be close enough to thank Jesus for all he'd done in her life, for always being there with buckets full of grace.

That image of heaven has never escaped me.

Often, most of us, me included, when we think of heaven we think of gold paved streets or all of our hurts instantly being swept away or various other voids in our earthly lives being mysteriously vanished by the mere presence of heaven. Not often, sadly, do I think of heaven as merely being in the presence of the God who has invited me there.

With shame, I'll say many times that doesn't seem like enough.

The thing my friend made me wonder is, what if it is all about that dance with Jesus? What if the joy of eternal life is spending our days imagining that dance and what we'd say as our eyes first locked with Jesus? What if it's not about the welcoming gifts we'll get before the dance ever starts? What if those words in John are right, "this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

What if heaven doesn't seem like enough because I don't spend enough time imagining that dance?

It's made me wonder about this: how awkward is it to dance with a total stranger. Someone we've never thought about dancing with, someone we barely know. For me - very awkward.

And how much more joy is there when you're dancing with someone you've longed to dance with your whole life?

There's one more thing to this. Jesus has told us that when we dance with the people around us, especially those who have no one to dance with, we ARE dancing with him. Jesus has said when we dance with the least of these - we ARE getting to "know" him.

Oh how beautiful that scene becomes, that first dance with Jesus - and maybe it won't be us who speaks first - but him. Maybe it will be Jesus filled with gratitude, thanking us for dancing with those who have always meant so much to him. Maybe as our eyes lock, it will be our eyes that fill with tears as we see just how much Jesus appreciates that we lived eternally long before eternal came.

How we think about heaven changes a lot.

If heaven is tomorrow - it's something we can afford to wait for.

If heaven is today, then it means we need to start dreaming of that dance today. It means we need to start dancing today.