I was at the bookstore the other day looking for a couple books that I thought RT would like for Christmas. One of the books I selected was 90 Minutes in Heaven. Since RT was already reading another book, I started reading it Christmas evening, took it with me to Georgia yesterday - and finished it this morning. Fascinating book.

In the true story, the man, Don Piper, was involved in a horrific wreck - and was declared dead at the scene. He was checked immediately and declared dead - then checked again later - still dead.  So they covered him and his car (he was trapped inside and would require the jaws of life to be extracted) with a tarp and concentrated on the accident victims who were alive - along with getting the wreckage cleared away in order for traffic to resume.  They figured the dead man could wait awhile.   But then a minister happened upon the accident scene and felt compelled to pray for the man in the badly mangled car.  The medics and police told him repeatedly that the man was dead, but he still felt strongly that he was supposed to pray for the man.  He climbed into the car and prayed for Don - and eventually started singing a hymn to him - and suddenly the dead man, Don,  started singing along with him.  He was alive - after having been twice declared dead. 

In the first of the book, Don describes the ninety minutes he spent from when the accident happened and he was declared dead to when he suddenly became alive again and started singing with the minister.  His injuries were horrible and he should have died - and his subsequent recuperation was long and horrible - and he will never walk normally again - and many years later he still lives in constant pain from his injuries.  However, for those ninety minutes, he was in heaven, and he describes his experience in detail.  The thing that impressed me most was his description of the music in heaven - how beautiful it was - how it was many different songs that were distinct but also blended in together and was more magnificent that anything he had ever heard before or since.

It brought back memories of the story my  mother told me about when her father died.  My mother was just a young girl of nine years when her father died, and her mother was inconsolable at the loss of the man she adored.  She cried and was unable to sleep for days.  She told my mother that finally one night he appeared to her and told her that everything was going to be all right - that she needed to go to sleep and rest - and then he sang her a song - the most beautiful song she had ever heard.  And she was comforted and she fell asleep for the first time since his death.  When she woke up, although she was comforted, she couldn’t remember the song - only that it was the most indescribably beautiful song she had ever heard.Indescribably beautiful music.  Is that what fills heaven?  Fascinating line of thought…

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