The Heaven Trilogy by Ted Dekker

leading to the kitchen. Its engraved lead-glass doors rested closed, distorting his vision of its contents, but he could see well enough. A small crystal bottle, maybe five inches high, stood in the middle of the top shelf. The contents looked almost black to him. Maybe maroon or red, although he’d never been good with all those weird names of colors. Grandma had once told him that nothing in the hutch mattered to her much, except that one crystal bottle. It, she said, symbolized the greatest power on earth. The power of love. And a tear had come to her eye as she said it. When he had asked her what was in the bottle, she had just turned her head, all choked up.
    The large picture of Jesus rested quietly on the wall to their right. The Son of God was spread on a cross, a crown of thorns responsible for the thin trails of red on his cheek. He stared directly at Spencer with sad blue eyes, and at the moment, Spencer didn’t know what to think about that.
    “Spencer.”
    He turned to face Grandma, sitting across from him, smiling gently. A knowing glint shone in those hazel eyes. She held a glass of ice tea in both hands comfortably. “Are you okay, Honey?”
    Spencer nodded, suddenly feeling strangely at home. Mom wasn’t here, of course, but everything else was. “I think so.”
    Helen tilted her head and shook it slowly, empathy rich in her eyes. “Oh, my poor child. I’m so sorry.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and she let it fall. She sniffed once.
    “But this will pass, son. Sooner than you know.”
    “Yeah, that’s what everybody says.” A lump rose in his throat, and he swallowed. He didn’t want to cry. Not now.
    “I’ve wanted to talk to you ever since Gloria left us,” Helen said, now with a hint of authority. She had something to say, and Spencer’s heart suddenly felt lighter in anticipation. When Grandma had something to say, it was best to listen.
    “You know when Lazarus died, Jesus wept. In fact, right now God is weeping.” She looked off to the window opened bright to the afternoon clouds. “I hear it sometimes. I heard it on that first day, after Gloria died. It about killed me to hear him weeping like that, you know, but it also gave me comfort.”
    “I heard laughter,” Spencer said.
    “Yes, laughter. But weeping too, at once. Over the souls of men. Over the pain of man. Over loss. He lost his son, you know.” She looked into his eyes. “And there weren’t doctors clamoring to save him, either. There was a mob beating him and spitting in his face and . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.
    Spencer imagined a red-faced man with bulging veins spraying spit into that face on the painting over there. Jesus’ face. The image struck him as odd.
    “People don’t often realize it, but God suffers more in the span of each breath than any man or woman in the worst period of history,” Helen said.
    Surprisingly, the notion came to Spencer like a balm. Maybe because his own hurt seemed small in the face of it. “But can’t God make all that go away?” he asked.
    “Sure he could, and he is, as we speak. But he allows us to choose on our own between loving him and rejecting him. As long as he gives us that choice, he will be rejected by some. By most. And that brings him pain.”
    “That’s funny. I’ve never imaged God as suffering. Or as hurting.”
    “Read the old prophets. Read Jeremiah or Ezekiel. Images of God wailing and weeping are commonplace. We just choose to ignore that part of reality in our churches today.”
    She smiled again, staring out of that window. “On the other hand, some will choose to love him of their own choosing. And that love, my child, is worth the greatest suffering imaginable to God. That is why he created us, for those few of us who would love him.”
    She paused and directed her gaze to him again. “Like your mother.”
    Now a mischievous glint lit his grandmother’s face. She sipped at her tea, and he saw a tremble in her hand. She leaned