My parents designed and built a very modest (there was a half-inch gap between the front door and the floor, for instance) modular home in Costa Rica. It wasn’t fancy, but it was ours, and the next-door neighbors had a boy my age who became my good friend. I loved that house. The other day my Mom had us bring out four boxes of mementos from those years, a trip down memory lane that lasted several hours.

As you entered that very drafty front door, on the right was a low bookcase filled with a growing set of National Geographic magazines, various other books (you would find the World Book collection on another bookcase), and a guestbook. I always thought it awkward to ask people to leave a register of their presence at our house back then, now, I think it was brilliant.

          I didn’t flip though that little book. I ran my finger over each name, as if that would give me some physical contact with those people. So many people. A LOT of people came through our house. College students coming for Bible study. Missionaries coming for social gatherings. Family from the US. School friends of mine coming as adults to visit. People that I haven’t thought about in 50 years. People that were precious to us then, people that have indelible marks on me now.

          The book humbled me for a couple of reasons. One is that I didn’t remember that book at all through my own adult life, and hence we don’t have one. And two, my guest list would not be as large. Well… I don’t know, but still, the pages of that book created a “cloud of witnesses” (as the apostle Paul might call them) that flooded my memories and filled the house as I recalled some of them to my Mom and brother.

          From the book of Revelation, we learn that there is a “Book of Life.”  This book is inferred from the words of Jesus who said, “rejoice because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20b). My image of that book is directly informed by that guest book on the bookshelf by the front door of our home in Costa Rica. It’s not so much that we get to the gates of Heaven and St. Peter checks to see if God got around to writing our names in it like a guest list, but more that what St. Peter finds is my signature, my recording of my presence in the Kingdom. God invites us all to the party, but not all of us accept the invitation. (Remember the parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22?)  Some of us are too busy. Some of us RSVP but then don’t show up. I think the Book of Life is more akin to my parents’ guest book than the posted roster of those who made the final cut for the football team.

           Is your name written in the Book of Life? Mine is. I first signed it years ago, whether it was when I prayed the Sinner’s Prayer with my Dad, or when he baptized me, or when I went to camp and delighted in the proximity with the eternal. I don’t know when I first signed that book, but I know I can hardly recognize the penmanship it was so long ago.
          

Is your name in the Book?

Reminiscing,

Craig

P.S. This is NOT an announcement about signing the Connect Card. ��

“He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” Revelation 3:5 (NKJV)