The dying American girl and hope of heaven

THE concept of heaven is a point of convergence for all the world’s major religions. It is believed to be the dwelling place of God and the ultimate destination of the faithful who meet certain conditions and please God. The point of divergence – a critical one – has to do with the kind of passport and visa required for entry into heaven.
For some of the religions, one only needs to believe in God and live a life that is pleasing to Him from that moment till departure from earthly life. The teachings about the nature and character of God on the one hand, and God’s expectations of mankind on the other, differ significantly from religion to religion.
Of the passport and visa requirements for heaven, Jesus in whom the Christians believe as both God and Saviour of the world, is unequivocal. He declared to His apostles and, by extension all those who profess faith in Him, in the sixth verse of the 14th chapter of John’s gospel: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through Me.” His declaration made over 2000 years ago was unprecedented and there has not been any other quite like it ever since.
In His teachings, Jesus gave the number one requirement for the journey to heaven as faith in God and acceptance of the divine plan for salvation which He came to execute through, His earthly ministry. To make heaven, one must believe in God, profess this belief, embrace the plan of salvation, live a holy life and love God and fellow humans. But while most of the religions espouse various doctrines of heaven, very few faithful actually look forward to making it there.
As the famous reggae star, Peter Tosh, sang “everybody wants to go heaven but nobody wants to die except Jesus.” A disappointed Master of Ceremony who was finding it hard to get his audience to applaud the high moments of a function deviced a funny but effective strategy. He urged the crowd to clap the number of years they wished to live with each clap representing an additional year. They just went on and on with even the elderly struggling to outclap younger folks.
Even among Christians, heaven is becoming a rare sermon topic in a generation where motivational talks and prosperity messages present a stronger appeal. Way back then in His earthly ministry, Jesus had wondered: “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Matt 16:26.
The case of Julianna – the dying five-year-old American girl is therefore worthy of celebration in a generation that is so afraid of death and cares little about heaven. Julianna is the daughter of Steve and Michelle Snow. Steve is a retired U.S. Air Force pilot who gave up his job partly to take care of terminally ill Julianna while Michelle is a neurologist. Julianna was born with a hard-to-diagnose incurable disease on August 25, 2010 as a second child to the couple.
According to excerpts from the mother’s blog, she and her husband noticed that at the age of nine months, Julianna could not sit up steadily. By her first Birthday, she could not stand, talkless walk. As the parents were to painfully discover, Julianna was suffering from “Chacot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, a neurodegenerative illness,” a hereditary condition where neurons in the brain and spinal cord are progressively destroyed. Julianna obviously inherited the disease from her father who had a very mild form of it only detected after suspicions over the origin of the little girl’s plight led in that direction.