Do they get newspapers in heaven do you think?

An icon in a Monastery keeps the faith

When my imagination runs away with itself, I like to imagine heaven like a very nice English country house hotel with angelic butlers and smiling maids looking after a thoroughly good clientele.  God in this particular version of heaven is probably like the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey.  In this version of heaven, the newspapers are delivered and laid on marble surfaces for God to examine.  He, having lived as long as the whole creation and been several different important people in many different places and centuries, is used to seeing the changing ideas.  Today, he will have picked up the Times (I'm sure he reads the Times first) and sees right at the top the headline LOSING RELIGION CAN BE SERIOUSLY GOOD FOR YOUR WEALTH.  He sighs and confides in an angelic Mr Bates that he has seen it all before in cycle after cycle.  Religion and Wealth;  one rises, one goes down and at the moment Wealth is in the lead.  The people outside the gates of Downton Heaven are less religious now and have rejected the idea of God and this has been proved by academics who have found by asking questions and noting the current answers that nations become increasingly secular the wealthier they are.  Surely everyone knows this, says God, Wealth has always promised that if you believe in her, you won't need to make any provision for your future, wealth will pave the way, will in its own way become a God to you, she will look after your children's happiness, offering sweeties and trips to the zoo and rides on bumper cars.  To you, the sweeties will take on a different shape, perhaps just high class chocolates but maybe high grade cigars and cognac and more, trips to the zoo become extravagant safaris in faraway places and rides on bumper cars might deliver you a Porsche or a Bentley.  Nothing wrong with that but once your run of luck along with your wealth  runs out and you can't drive the car because you are too old, or travel abroad for the same reason, no more skiing or safaris, no more dinners out in swanky restaurants, you might feel a bit depressed especially if you hadn't read the health warning on the packet.  Wealth, it says, runs out!  Now, if wealth departs from you and health too, that is one thing but if wealth departs from the society you live in and economic health declines, where are you going to turn because there won't be any money in the coffers to pay for your benefits?  Maybe then, if we are lucky, there will be some old man or woman or some old Rabbi, Monk, Nun Priest or Teacher, a holy person, man or woman who will have kept the words which religions are built on, words which tell of the God who takes the form of light and air and water and earth, of life itself.  Those are the words you are going to be treasuring when everything in your world has gone a bit dark and those are the words that this old grandmother would have wishes every one of her grandchildren to have heard so that they can find them when they need them.  That's why religions work in hardened times, they have the words you really want to hear.

It's true by the way! but not the bit about God being English and like the Earl of Grantham!