People often want to share their spiritual experiences with me, as well as the trials and tribulations of their everyday life. I have come to see these moments as ways God wants to comfort and surprise us.
They are as different and varied as the people themselves but they seem to have one constant thread: People find peace, feel comforted and safe, and feel understood and loved, sometimes for the first time in a very long time.
My own mother, who was orphaned at age 2, learned how to play the organ very well before her death at 93. Her mother had played concert piano, and Mom always cried when she heard this type of music at a concert or on the radio.
She asked me many times why I thought she cried, and I said perhaps it was because she had heard beautiful concert piano played every day for two full years, by someone she dearly loved and who loved her, and then one day the music just died.
Whenever she played the organ, she said she could feel someone standing behind her, listening in a loving way, and it brought her great comfort and happiness. She said that the loving presence would stand very close and still for a while, listening to her play, and then move gently on into another room. She could never turn around fast enough to see the person’s face, but when she said she thought it was her mother, she always smiled.
These are true glimpses of heaven and gifts God presents to us every day, when we are watching for him.
Trudy gets so many questions and stories of end-of-life experiences from Guideposts readers, we decided to make her responses a regular feature on her blog. If you have a story about a “glimpse of heaven,” please share it with us. Send it to glimpsesofheaven@guideposts.org.
