Jones - Broken for good: how grief awoke my greatest hopes

Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.

William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

G od arranges a world in six days.

Straining night from day, and pooling oceans, he stocks them with prawns and plankton, coral kingdoms. Swordfish, sea urchins, sharks, and stingrays. Dolphins. The double-blowhole humpback whale.

He plants redwoods, evergreens, hangs high the North Star. Fastens tissuey wings on buzzing green beetles, then whiskers on kittens. Slowly, he stretches brontosauri necks strong, long, like hes rolling soft pretzels. Theyre Play-Doh in his palms.

Scattering sunflowers by the fieldful, he smooths a carpet of seaweed. Then theres clover and cacti and coconut trees, petunias and pussy willows and poinsettias. The darting dance of pollination, black-and-yellow drones weaving a world together. Ears of corn shoot skyward, potatoes burrow below, as bunches of grapes erupt from the vine, spilling royal skins taut, tart, hot in the afternoon sun.

The party is just getting started.

Enter horses, hippos, hermit crabs. Cue the foxes, flamingos, finches, flying frogs.

Behold the feathers of the macaw, a head-to-toe rainbow, colored with every Crayola in the box. See the plumage of peacocks, the turkeys wiggly wattle, blubbery penguins braving the cold, not a shiver. Mix in migratory patterns, mating calls, that fierce mothering instinct. Cocoon naps, moon-pull tides, silk-spinning worms, falls fiery leaves. And still, were water striders, only skimming the surface.

Go deeper, and find atoms, acoustics, accelerationintrinsic forces and immutable laws that help all hang together. Energy, equilibrium. Reflection, refraction.

Genetics. Gravity.

Grace.

This, a boundless banquet of beauty, a peek into the playground of the infinite mind. It is so good. Over and over, thats the refrain: God nods, and it is good.

But is it enough?

To crown it all, God breathes life into dust, and they rise, two jewels: man, woman, and a magnetic, mysterious love that pulls flesh to flesh, two into one.

You take that idea, and you extrapolate it. Its simple math, reallyalmost painfully so. If this creationso shaken down, pressed into our laps, overflowingis the handiwork of a six-day God, shouldnt it follow that heaven, the paradise Jesus says hes been fussing with for, oh, just thousands of years, is going to have better amenities? The most coveted coffee, in-room Wi-Fi, whatever it is that wins five-star status? Between the 14-carat streets, crystalline seas, thundering throne, and pearly gates (maybe metaphors, maybe not), I bet it makes Disney World look like a backyard swing set. The kind that hiccups a little when you pump your legs too hard, too high.

See, I never doubted that heaven is trump. Move over, earth: Youve medaled silver. Youre the fast-forgotten runner-up. Heaven wins!

I believe these headlines, always have. In fact, my hope, my Christian faith, is tied up in precisely this. Which is why I cant fathom why, when my dad died of melanoma, everyone assumed Id somehow forgotten. Maybe Id contracted a case of grief-amnesia.

It was the first thing theyd remind me of.

But Becky, remember, hes in a far better place. Try and cling to that.