Living in Light of Eternity with Colleen Chao
You may have seen her in indianapolis: the tall woman wearing a gray baseball cap, worshiping with contagious joy. She walked on stage with distinct poise after her testimony video was shown at Revive ’21. At True Woman ’22, shw sat with Nancy Demoss Woglemuth to give a follow-up interview.
Since then, her name has appeared in searches across the Revive Our Hearts website:
Colleen Chao, terminal cancer. Colleen Chao, testimony. Colleen Chao, updates.
If you’ve searched for Colleen’s name, you’ve likely come across her most recent interview on Grounded. In the episode’s cover photo, she’s instantly recognizable with her radiant smile and trademark gray baseball cap. Three letters cover the front of the hat: HWB.
Heaven works backward.
Colleen doesn’t just wear those words as an accessory. The Lord has written them across every corner of her life.
LIVING HEAVENWARD
When Colleen customized the design on her hat, she looked to a favorite author for inspiration. She took the phrase, “Heaven works backward,” from C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce, but Lewis’ idea was not new. His words were inspired by the apostle Paul: For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. —2 Corinthians 4:17–18 Long before Colleen was diagnosed with cancer, she lived with forever in mind. As she told Nancy during a radio interview, “Eternity’s been wired into me—the thoughts and longings for it . . . for the last ten or fifteen years.” Evidence of that is seen in the posts Colleen has written for the Revive Our Hearts blog. Her archives illustrate what it looks like to live in light of eternity when it comes to singleness, marriage, motherhood, chronic illness, depression, and the ordinary struggles of life in a broken world. Each post gives insight as to how we can look past what is temporary and live with an eternal perspective:
Colleen started wearing HWB in response to losing her hair as an effect of chemo, but she modeled how to live in light of eternity years before she ever heard a doctor say, “You have cancer.” She reminds us that we’re not to wait to adorn the teaching of God our Savior, but in everything—through all the days of our life, we are to fix our eyes on Jesus and live for the kingdom to come. Because soon, we’ll know the full and glorious meaning of Colleen’s message: Heaven works backward.