The only way to remove pain from death is to remove love from life.

The sweetness of reunion is the joy of heaven.

Worms, fire, or the sea might consume my body. But my spirit will live in a world with no more wanderings and trials. I do not have to pass through many painful incarnations. Beyond death lies paradise.

Taking heaven seriously, then, means taking suffering seriously, now. Not because we've bought into the myth that we can create a utopia given enough time, technology, and good voting choices, but because we have great confidence that God has not abandoned human history and is actively at work within it, taking it somewhere

It often appears that those who talk the most about going to heaven when you die talk the least about bringing heaven to earth right now, as Jesus taught us to pray: "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." At the same time, it often appears that those who talk the most about relieving suffering now talk the least about heaven when we die.

Heaven comforts, but it also confronts.

I believe absolutely and certainly that, when you die, you will meet your loved ones and know them and be reunited with them, never to be seperated again.

The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.

The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable. Because you are not fit to go there, I answered. All sinners would be miserable in heaven.

Existence, after losing her, would be hell.

In every cloud, in every tree — filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women — my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!