A few days ago I had just turned off the engine to my car, ready to open the door and get out, when the quickest of sensations flew through my mind. It was almost like a smell, but it had nothing to do with my nose since the only scents permeating the air were freshly cut grass and burning oil from my engine.

So it was more like the memory of a smell. I don’t know what triggered the sensation—maybe it did have something to do with the green smell of newly shorn lawn, or perhaps I’m simply getting older and my neurons are starting to misfire. Whatever caused it, I smelled the camp I attended during summers in high school, and that smell set off a tumble of feelings and sensations from all those years ago.

Yeah, you may think I’m losing my mind, and I certainly didn’t expect the mental lightning bolt of my teenage experiences at camp. But I actually appreciated the sensation. I loved summer camp and all the expectations, or expectancy, that led up to it. The feeling was akin to pure joy.

And those thoughts of joy led me to briefly consider heaven, something I try not to do too often. Oh, yes, I trust that heaven exists, but I also believe we have very little concept of what it will be like. For me my belief is enough, and I’ve had little desire to create an imperfect picture in my mind about something that I cannot comprehend or know for now.

But that’s exactly what I did for a few minutes sitting in my car, sifting through memories of camp 20 years later on a spring day in Memphis. For some reason heaven didn’t seem too far away. And depending on any number of perspectives, it’s not! For “half glass” people (yes, it’s okay to admit that there are many Christians who prefer to view life through Eeyore-shaped spectacles), eternal life is only a heartbeat away.

In The Great Divorce, an allegorical look at life-after-death, C.S. Lewis illustrates his belief that eternal life doesn’t begin when we die. He would say that we’ve already begun our eternal life and that we’ll look back at this life and see it as either the beginning of hell or of heaven.

So those are two ideas: death as a beginning of heaven—or hell—or death as a continuation of our already eternal life. Six of one or half-a-dozen of another, I say.

What about the concept that time is a construction and that one day we’ll actually be outside of time? If that’s true, then the next logical step is that we’re already living in eternity, since eternity doesn’t exist in time. It’s the other way around. What if we’re already looking down at ourselves from heaven, living our dirty, beautiful lives, slouching our way to sanctification?

Perhaps we’ll be able to look perfectly at our own lives, peering down at them like brilliantly complex—and complete—snowglobes. Or maybe we’ll even be able to experience parts of our own lives again. Would we have to go through the bad with the good? Would that be a terrible thing? I imagine that as a perfect human I could live each moment—the best and the worst—as fully redeemed by God.

I imagine that as a redeemed man, I should be doing that now!

Personally, I hope I get to taste the expectancy of camp again as a 15-year old. I’d like to experience the joy of college as a young student. And I’d like to know in full, and without doubt, the times of pain, when Christ was holding me in strength and love.

Then again, what do I know? I have no idea what heaven will really be like. But I do know the Father has prepared a place for me there. The rest should be like…

well…

the expectancy of going to camp very, very soon.