Starting with Heaven

A long time friend with whom I've shared most of my adult life experiences traveled to Wheaton Illinois many years ago to visit a friend who lives there. When she returned, she told me about going to "heaven" at the Billy Graham museum at Wheaton College and that her young daughter had  been especially excited to learn they were going to see it. No one knew, however, that she was expecting to see the little brother who had died in infancy before she was born. My friend's description of her daughter's disappointment brought tears to my eyes.

I remembered this when I visited my daughter many years later while she was a student at Wheaton. Having few hours alone, I visited the museum, asking the receptionist where "heaven" was. I noted her slight look of confusion as she pointed me in "Heaven's" direction. After passing a shelve of books for sale, I came into a small, bright alcove which seemed to place me, mid-air, in a blue sky with soft white clouds above and below. Interesting, I thought as I experienced the eternity of mirror magic. I guessed that I had arrived in "Heaven," but, like my friend's daughter, felt disappointed. There was no music, no stern greeting by St. Peter, nothing resembling a near-death experience. Whatever I may have expected to see, this space didn't give me any new incentive to die. I wondered as I stood there if perhaps the mid-air experience was meant to simulate the rapture, an idea that terrified me as a child.

As I moved away from "Heaven," The Hallelujah Chorus suddenly began blaring behind my back.  I returned to the lucite ledge to listen, humming along on the alto line so as not to attract attention, and remained until the song ended.

The next exhibit in the museum featured a space with a large screen before which were small, backless benches. I sat down and waited for a few moments. When nothing happened on the screen, I read the message posted on the wall which described the video that was evidently supposed to be playing. Doesn't anything work around here? I mused. When I finally left that space, the video switched on and the film began. So I returned to the bench and watched. And so it continued as I meandered through the museum. I'd walk into one alcove or another, some with seats, some without, expecting my presence to flip some switch and signal a video or slide presentation or dialogue. At each space I paused and waited; leaving, I'd inevitably hear the sound of voice or music and realize that the action was happening behind my back. What a strange museum, I thought to myself.

It didn't occur to me until I had passed by Billy Sunday and the history of Salvation Army and finally the travels and accomplishments of George Whitefield that I had traversed the museum backwards, that I had experienced the history of Evangelicalism in reverse order.

I visited that museum multiple times thereafter, always beginning at the beginning. I have to say, though, that I didn't find those visits more interesting than the first. "Heaven" at that museum still seems a small reward for all the effort.