In the compelling book, Imagine the God of Heaven, we’re told the account of a woman identified as Karina who grew up a Catholic in Colombia.

She knew the Our Father by heart, of course — but it was just rote: without great meaning until the day her heart failed.

It was during the covid pandemic. It seems she had gone to the hospital with elevated blood pressure. She was examined (these days, perhaps a bit too swiftly), then sent home with medication.

It was while resting on a lounge chair that she came to the conviction that she was dying — and also, dauntingly, that Heaven and hell were fighting for her.

She called to her husband and three children and apologized for all past wrongs.

“I told them, I’m going to Heaven, but I feared I was going to hell because of all the bad things I had done in the past.”

It turns out she had been a singer in a band, a fashionista, a swimsuit model — striving for fame and fortune or whatever.

Partying and promiscuity had led to pregnancy at nineteen.

Distraught (she wanted to keep the baby, but her parents refused to let her stay with them while pregnant. Her cousin urged her to get an abortion.

And, distraught, that she had done.

Now at the threshold of death, she sincerely prayed for forgiveness.

When her heart stopped, she rose out of her body, as so many who have this experience describe.

“In the blink of an eye, I started dropping into this blacker-than-black place, head down, going fast into this black tunnel,” she recounted to author John Burke. “And it was really, really cold. I had a fear in me, and I knew I was going to hell. I started praying in Spanish, ‘I’m sorry, God, please forgive me.’ And I was repeating in Spanish, ‘Our Father in Heaven, holy is Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your Will be done. Forgive us our sins.’

“And I would say, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for those things I knew were wrong.’ I was repenting, though I didn’t know what ‘repent’ meant.”

But boy did it count.

With her heart-felt supplication, a gold ray pierced the blackness.

“A shower of love came over me, something I had never felt before flooded my being,” she testified. “This intense love, not only love, but everything that came with it — peace, no pain, no anger, nothing. Even right now, I just want to go back to it.”

But that isn’t the way God works.

Though Karina thought she deserved and might still be headed for hell, a voice — more felt than heard — said, “Come, come, you’re home.”

Karina could see all these people in the light.

They too were saying, “Come, come” — and celebrating.

Karina was overwhelmed.

But Jesus too spoke, and it turned out not to be her time. He wanted her to go back. Her mission: a prayer warrior for Jesus.

And a purveyor of the Lord’s Prayer.

[resources: Imagine the God of Heaven]