Pavement: Revelation 21:21

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Here’s a joke someone told me once: A Christian died and stood at the entrance of heaven. An angel said to him, "You didn't hear? You are allowed to go back and bring one thing from earth to have for eternity." The person was whisked back to his earthly home and, thinking long and hard, finally settled on exchanging his life savings for a block of gold. He put the gold in a suitcase and went back to heaven. The angel was curious, "What did you decide to bring?" The man opened his suitcase and showed the angel his precious and heavy block of gold, which had not been easy to earn. The angel got a quizzical look, stepped back, looked the man in the eye, and said, "You brought pavement?"

In the Bible's climactic description of the New Jerusalem ("often referred to as Heaven), it says, "and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass" (Revelation 21:21 ESV). Gold will be in abundance, will be common—streets will be made of it—and the things that we have strived to earn and accumulate in this life will pale in comparison to the glories of the eternal state Christians are promised by God in the Bible.

The joke is convicting if we compare the effort we put into accumulating ultimately worthless things to the effort we put into things that truly last for an eternity. Jesus refers to eternally valuable things in a few different ways: "laying up treasures in heaven" (Matthew 6:19-24), or "being rich toward God" (Luke 12:13-21), or using earthly wealth as an investment to create eternal friendships (Luke 16:9-13).

How might you use the earth's valuable things—and no question, we need some of them to get by, and we enjoy others of them as God's gracious gifts for rest— How might you use the earth's valuable things as investments in eternity? How might you use earth's gold (heaven's pavement) as a road to eternal investment? How does it pave the way for you to serve God and love others?

And as you set your mind on heaven, as a believer in the death and resurrection of Jesus in your place, be encouraged that your efforts for heavenly things will not be wasted, no matter how challenging or costly they are right now. Paul wrote, in his quest for eternal investments, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18 ESV; see also 2 Corinthians 4:17, 2 Timothy 4:8).

You can't take pavement to heaven. Heaven has plenty of gold already. So don't get focused on the pavement. Use the pavement to pave the way for focus on the things that last.