This started as a pondering to clarify my thinking about my, or any, soul. A soul is that part of me that is living in eternity now, while at the same time temporarily confined in a carbon housing. There will be a future blog post on this thought.
My thought progression was thus: soul ® Heaven ® Murgatroyd. In my early teen days, there was a cartoon character who frequently said, “Heavens to Murgatroyd.” The phrase was used as a mock-sophisticated expression of surprise. “Heavens to Betsy” is an older phrase for a good surprise, but I had an Aunt Betsy whom I loved greatly, so it didn’t sound right to use it. It was the wackiness of “Murgatroyd” that caused me to include it in my developing communication palette of words and phrases.
Preparing for this writing, I looked up the word’s etymology. Murgatroyd is a real name in the UK. “In 1371, a constable was appointed for the district of Warley in Yorkshire, UK. He adopted the name of Johanus de Morgateroyde – literally, John of Moor Gate Royde or ‘the district leading to the moor.’” (I can go back to bed now. I have learned one thing new today.)
The word “heaven” has a lot of baggage in our little worlds. Think of the ways you use it or have heard it used in a non-religious conversation. In a religious context, we use it to refer to the abode of God and the special destination waiting for the saints to cease from their labors. A place with gold streets, no tears, constant pleasure.
Who doesn’t build their own image of a future place of total absence of pain and stress? A place of perpetual peace and prosperity. An environment of total acceptance and approval. I still enjoy creating a longing for heaven as a place where I get to drive a Formula One race car anytime I want, as fast as I want, and anywhere I want. But, lo, I cannot find any Biblical support for my heavenly fantasy. And that is just what most of us have made Heaven to be, a vacation fantasy, a luxurious paradise. Not a whole lot different from ten days at Disney World or living on a perpetual cruise ship.
The Bible hardly pulls back the curtain for us to see inside. However, we are given much information about who is inside the center of Eternity’s throne room: God. YAHWEH is there. He is the monotheistic Three-In-One: Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.
Heaven is not actually a “place” to go to. It is not God’s home base from which he moves about His creation. It is more of a state of existence, of being. God does not dwell in a “place.” Think about it, where would God have been before He created? There is literally nothing outside of God. He did not create outside of himself. The Cosmos was created by God inside Himself. He does not “come and go” to earth, rather earth is inside of Him, as if God had an inside and an outside like humans do. He is not like us! We are a shadow likeness of Him.
When we die, we do not go to a place; we go to a person, The eternal Person! The hands that formed us from clay will cradle and continue to develop us in eternity.
This is all too wonderful for me to comprehend!
One of the greatest deceptions, perhaps the greatest, that Evil uses to de-create Creation is seen in humanity’s miserable attempt to create a god who worships them. We want to worship a god in our likeness. All the while praying to God to favor us with our personalized, distorted “heavenly” existence today. That will never happen.
All our “todays” are preparation to join our Creator in the administration of His rebirthed Creation. Just as you experienced a “rebirth” in Jesus. What that looks like in real time is unknown to me, and to you. It is fully known to Him. From what I have observed in eight decades, whatever God does is “good, very good.” Nothing is going to change that fact.
It was that way before Creation, during Creation, and will remain that way in the New Creation. I can relax in that!
I leave you with a doxology that I remember from my youth choir days:
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Photo – Angel’s Landing in the center. The picture was taken in April, 2026, near the trailhead to Scouts Landing in Zion National Park.
Baldwin Heirlooms 