The Perfect Flower

So last night something kind of sad/cool happened. I was about to go to sleep and I was laying in bed, when I suddenly started crying...another "Dad moment" hit me. I was consciously trying to talk myself out of crying, saying to myself, "Come on, Beth...Dad's gone...this isn't a big surprise all of a sudden," but I couldn't stop crying. Finally, in the dark, I cried out, tears streaming down my face, "Dad! Where are you? Dad!" No answer, of course, since I was alone in my house with just my cat. Then I cried out, "God, why can't my dad come back? Why can't I just see him again?" Then in the silence that followed, my mind was consumed by a picture of the most beautiful, perfect flower I had ever seen. Somehow I knew it was a white magnolia flower and it was so pure, so big. It seemed big enough to lay down on. This picture was the closest I could find to the flower I saw, but it doesn't even come close to the beauty of this flower in my mind. I felt instantly at peace, calm, and comforted but I found myself asking God, "Huh? What's that supposed to mean?" Then I heard him saying, "Look up. Look deeper! Look farther!" So in my mind I looked up, past the flower and everywhere I looked there were hundreds, THOUSANDS, of these beautiful flowers EVERYWHERE! Covering paths, covering trees, covering a palace, covering everything with such a pure, sweet beauty. As I stared at it in amazement, my next thought was, "He's here. Why would he want to leave?"

I'm pretty sure I've never read in the bible that Heaven is covered with white magnolia flowers, so I'm not sure what that picture in my mind was about, but the reason I think it was from God is because I felt comforted INSTANTLY and my very next thought was one of absolute worship of a Savior who is majestic, pure, holy, and good. A Savior who created a paradise so perfectly wonderful, a paradise where even the smallest detail is more breathtaking than the most amazing scenery in all of Earth, a paradise where he wants us to spend forever with him. This is the God I want to spend my life living for.