My friend Bob was dealing with a difficult family situation. Now, in my opinion, he did not need the grief, because Bob was getting up in years and his health was poor.
He said to me, “I can’t wait for heaven.”
I said, “They don’t call it ‘rest’ without reason.”
That’s a reference to Revelation 14:13. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on….that they may rest from their labors.
When I was a kid, a song we’d hear occasionally was called The Big Rock Candy Mountain. We heard it, smiled at its silliness, hummed along with the catchy tune and thought nothing more of it.
One day I discovered this song was the hobo’s national anthem during the Depression. And it gives us his idealized picture of paradise.
Harry McClintock (aka “Haywire Mac”) wrote the song, we’re told, in 1928. Here’s a little of it….
“In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks.
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind.
There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.