“I’m having a crisis of imagination,” my wife said to me just the other day. “About heaven.”

It’s been a tough year for our family and those near us. A tragic suicide, followed by the loss of our first grandson. Eight months of chronic pain—the kind only narcotics give you any relief from—ends in a total hip replacement for Stasi. Having lunch with some dear allies, they tell us their nine-year-old boy is going blind. And then a friend calls us a few weeks ago to say her body is shutting down and she has months to live. I could go on; we’ve just been around too much loss, and when you do, you grow weary of this hurting world and wonder if the next chapter is really going to make it all worth it. Thus the comment about heaven....