Readings on living and dying – 4 – The Five people you meet in Heaven

Alan writes – Mitch Albom wrote the highly acclaimed best seller Tuesday’s with Morrie continues this book’s theme with this new book – The Five People You Meet in Heaven – The book is a novel that tells the story of Eddie who a maintenance man who keeps the rides safe at the Ruby Pier amusement park. His 83rd birthday seems like any other day --- he inspects the rides, watches the people, and makes pipe cleaner animals for the children. However on this day he dies unexpectedly, trying to rescue a young girl in harm's way.

Eddie wakes up in heaven --- but not to the "paradise garden, a place where (we) can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains," not the idyllic place that heaven has been described as throughout time. Eddie awakens to a series of introductions --- or reintroductions --- to five people whom he had met during his life, either in passing or at length. They each carry answers to the whys and how’s of Eddie's life. With each meeting he relives in part that time of his life, but now the gaps are filled in. For maybe the first time he sees what REALLY happened. "There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man, Eddie's first encounter, explains. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth."

This novel is suggestive of the link between the hidden realities of this life and their unfolding in the next. In many ways it is like the novel written by M.Scott Peck on life after death – In Heaven As On Earth: A Vision of the Afterlife.

Comments

[len hjalmarson]

We rented the movie not long ago.. definitely worth watching.