Perpetua's Diary of Heaven

In March of 203 AD, a young noblewoman named Perpetua sat in a sweltering Carthaginian prison, nursing her infant son through the iron bars. She was twenty-two years old, well-educated, from a respected family — and she had just been arrested for professing faith in Christ.

Her father begged her to recant. The Roman procurator Hilarianus offered her a way out. All she had to do was burn a pinch of incense to the emperor's genius and walk free. Her old life stood waiting at the prison door — wealth, comfort, her father's approval, her child growing up in safety.

But Perpetua had already died. Not physically — not yet — but something fundamental had shifted. In her prison diary, one of the oldest surviving texts written by a Christian woman, she recorded vision after vision of heaven. While the world pressed in with threats and grief, her mind reached upward. She saw a golden ladder stretching beyond the clouds. She saw gardens where the Good Shepherd welcomed His own.

Her father wept. The crowd roared. The arena waited. And Perpetua walked into it singing hymns, her gaze fixed on something the spectators could not see.

Paul wrote to the Colossians that our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" — tucked away in a place no empire can reach, no executioner can touch. Perpetua understood. She had already set her heart on things above, and what Rome took from her that day was only what she had already surrendered.