Hey there, @wrestlingdesires,

Thanks so much for reading, and for your comments and questions.

I thought that sort of thing was over once we moved on 😂
Sleep was supposed to be over too?

Both your "I thought" and "supposed to be" are unbiblical ideas that almost everyone (apart from the most careful among biblical scholars) takes for granted. These errors have been promulgated by careless and prejudicial misinterpretations of isolated bible verses, and (like barnacles) have over time and by tradition become nearly irreparably attached to our thinking.

I may be tilting at windmills, but one of my hopes for writing stories in this milieu is to disabuse readers of such misconceptions about the magnificent future that awaits those who Jesus loves.

Stop and think about it for a moment. Isn't what you've termed "that sort of thing"--namely, love--the very subject of the Second Greatest Commandment?

"But isn't Jesus talking about brotherly love, and not the love between a man and a woman?" one might object.

Is he? Let's move from the general to the specific case of male-female relations.

Jesus often appealed to the original state of the world at creation to make his points.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” - Matthew 19:4-6

From the beginning, God created complementary humans, male and female, and evidence from scripture uniformly indicates this gender distinction is maintained in the resurrection. Consider also the very first command recorded in scripture:

"God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth..."

This command has never been revoked. The uniform teaching of scripture is that children are one of God's greatest blessings.

"Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
They will not be ashamed
When they speak with their enemies in the gate."

How is it, then, that (presumptively based on a single remark that Jesus made) all of this is overlooked in favor of the elimination of the natural relations between the sexes?

Even the most casual internet search will reveal any number of writers, going all the way back to Thomas Aquinas, who engage in incredible mental gymnastics to try and insist that--even though in the resurrection we retain all of our gender-specific physicality--we no longer use it, for eternity. This really is quite a stretch, and one that I believe is based on an unfounded and prudish misunderstanding of the ceremonial and figurative nature of the marriage relationship in the present age.

One of these days, I hope to make good on my threats to write a comprehensive diatribe on this subject; meanwhile, you may find some more commentary of interest in this installment, part of an earlier series I wrote about heaven some years ago. Don't miss the comments below the article.

Regarding "not sleeping?" This notion is a misunderstanding spun out of a scant two instances in St. John's Apocalypse, one of the most if not the most symbolic pieces of literature in the entire bible. Within that book itself you can find abundant evidence that much of the content is symbolic, figures of speech intended to get us thinking and direct our attention to other particulars. To insist that there is literally no night in heaven, and to consequently conclude that no one there will sleep sleep, is the height of absurdly careless exegesis. And yet, thanks to centuries of tradition, that is where we are.

I hope you find my (possibly over-the-top extensive) response helpful, and I would love to hear your reaction.

😄😇😉