90 Minutes in Heaven

On a typical January evening, I drove to Crane Library in downtown Quincy for our new monthly book group. We would be discussing 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. In the library lobby, I met the four or five regular participants as well as a couple of new people who would be joining us.
As we got off the elevator and moved to our meeting room, we noticed it was full of people. “What are they doing there?” I thought “don’t they know we have this room reserved?” As I walked into the room I realized that they were there for our book club – about 20 extra people.
I quickly found out that some expected the author of the book to be there. Others were “interested” in the book and its message. As the session moved on, though, it became apparent that most were there searching for something.
Don Piper’s book is about his experience of dying, going to heaven (for 90 minutes) and then, through the power of prayer, coming back to earth. He was in a terrible car crash as he was driving home from a pastor’s conference. A tractor-trailer smashed head-on into his Ford Focus and instantly killed him. One of his colleagues came to the crash sight to see if he could help. His colleague felt God calling him to go into the car and pray for Don. As he was singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” Don miraculously came back to life and started to sing with him.
The rest of the book could be described as 13 months in hell. Don spent the next year in excruciating pain as the doctors put his leg in a “fixator”, designed to slowly grow bone back and repair his leg. He went through a period of deep depression, asking God why he didn’t let him stay in heaven, and why he couldn’t go back. It was a thirteen month emotional, physical and spiritual roller coaster ride for Don that ultimately led him to understand why he went through the whole ordeal.
The book covers the deepest questions we have as humans, questions that were at the table that night. There were those who had lost loved ones, who took great comfort in hearing an “eye-witness” account of what heaven is like. Many talked of sensing the nearness of loved ones who had died. I told them that heaven is not a place far up and away, but closer to us that we can imagine, and so our loved ones who have died are closer to us than we think.
We also talked a lot about the presence of miracles in our lives today. Many wondered how prayer could have brought a dead man back to life after 90 minutes. I told them that miracles do occur in these days - more often that we think. There are many stories of miraculous things happening to people that we will never know about. People are often hesitant to talk about them. They are so special, so important to them, it is hard to share. They also fear they will be dismissed as delusional.
God saves Don Piper in the book in many ways: from that pastor praying for him in the car, to the people who come to him at his lowest hour in recovery and speak a word that he needs to hear to keep moving on. In many ways, the book is about the miracle of God putting people in our lives at just the right time, with a specific purpose to fulfill. That is something that happens to just about all of us, yet many of us are totally unaware of it.

I feel blessed to have participated in that book club session. I don’t know if I’ll ever see those 20 extra people again, but I think God did bring them to that library room for a reason, and they left with a message of hope that they needed.