Heaven: The Land of No Memory and Our Relationships

With a Subtitle: Wrestling honestly with Psalm 88 and how love will be transformed in Heaven.

A brief Excerpt: A believer wrestles honestly with Psalm 88 and the question of how relationships, marriage, and memory will be transformed in Heaven.

The Author is: Rina Schultz

Editor’s note – We run this piece because it does something many essays on Heaven avoid: it asks the hard, tender questions out loud. The author does not pretend to settle them. Instead she lets Psalm 88 voice a grief that most of us have felt and few of us speak. Read it not as a doctrinal treatise but as one believer thinking through Scripture in the aftermath of real loss, and let her questions sharpen your own hope.

The Cry of Psalm 88

God, you're my last chance of the day. I spend the night on my knees before you. Put me on your salvation agenda; take notes on the trouble I'm in. I've had my fill of trouble; I'm camped on the edge of Hell. I'm written off as a lost cause, one more statistic, a hopeless case. Abandoned as already dead, one more body in a stack of corpses, And not so much as a gravestone— I'm a black hole in oblivion. You've dropped me into a bottomless pit, sunk me in a pitch-black abyss. I'm battered senseless by your rage, relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger. You turned my friends against me, made me horrible to them. I'm caught in a maze and can't find my way out, blinded by tears of pain and frustration. I call to you, God; all day I call. I wring my hands, I plead for help. Are the dead a live audience for your miracles? Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you? Does your love make any difference in a graveyard? Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of Hell? Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark, your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory? [Psalm 88:9-12]

I have lost count of how many times the Psalms have expressed my feelings better than my own words ever could. I learned to pray by quoting the Psalms. I learned to be honest with God from what I read in the Psalms. I think I’m quite familiar with the Psalms, but I still find surprising verses.

Editor’s note – There is a quiet permission in those lines worth pausing on. The Psalms hand us language for the days when our own words fail, and they do not scold us for bringing our rawest questions to God. Honesty before Him is not the opposite of faith; it is often its proof.

What Are Relationships Like in Heaven?

I’ve often thought about Heaven. I’m not really curious about its appearance. I gather that it will look like a better, unsullied version of Earth. Heaven is the blueprint of Earth. The thing that I wonder about is relationships. What are relationships like in Heaven?

Here, on Earth, we live in an “us – them” reality. We have different relationships with different people. Family and friends are closer to us than strangers. Often, life is turned into allies and enemies. We don’t love everyone equally.

I have a special relationship with my husband. I can’t think that there will ever be a time when I won’t love him, or view him as my husband. We share a special bond. Yet, Jesus said in Heaven, relationships don’t work the same way as on Earth (Matthew 22:23-33). There are no marriages in Heaven, except for Christ’s marriage with His bride, the Church (Ephesians 5:31-32; Revelation 19). How will it change in Heaven? When my husband and I are in Heaven together, how will we not have the same relationship we had on Earth? How will we love everyone equally?

The Bible tells us that there will be no pain or sorrow in Heaven (Revelation 21:4), yet thinking that some of my loved ones won’t be in Heaven causes immense anguish. Will we not care about the lost in Heaven? What will change so that we don’t think of loved ones or marriage partners, parents, or children? Thoughts like these often occupy my mind, and more so since the death of my brother and daughter.

Editor’s note – This is grief asking a theological question, and we should handle it gently. Scripture is clear that we will know one another in Heaven, yet it is restrained about the details the author longs for. Where the Bible draws no firm line, we do well to hold our speculations loosely and our hope firmly.

The Land of No Memory

Reading Psalm 88 causes me to think that we simply won’t remember. “Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark, your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory?” What simpler way is there to forget pain if we don’t remember the people or things that cause us pain? To me, it sounds like mercy.

I know this contradicts so many stories I’ve heard of people reportedly having gone to Heaven during near-death experiences. Was this what they actually encountered, or was it a product of their subconscious mind? I don’t know. It does make sense to me that death is a place of no remembrance. Psalm 88 refers to the place of death, not Heaven. I know this, but it doesn’t stop me from wondering and questioning how things will be different in Heaven.

Have you thought about the changes in relationships in Heaven? Will nothing else matter except being with God? Will we be so focused on His glory and greatness that we won’t think about anyone else? How can we forget the special bonds we had here on Earth and will we treat loved ones like strangers? I know that we will know and recognize one another in Heaven. Jesus spoke about Lazarus and the rich man recognizing one another. How will it work? It boggles my mind.

A Word from the Editor
The author rightly notes that Psalm 88 describes Sheol, the realm of death, and not the redeemed life to come. So we can hold her tender questions alongside a firmer promise. Revelation 21:4 says of the Heaven to come, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” That is not erasure but healing — the gentle hand of a Father who knows exactly what we have lost. Whatever changes, the One who set Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom will not love us, or our loved ones in Christ, less than we do. We can entrust the unanswered questions to Him.