Heaven and virtual worlds

At university, a friend articulated the unattractiveness of Christian faith for him by saying that heaven seemed pretty boring. My riposte at the time was that if it was boring then it could hardly be heaven. In fact, since then I've come across some who argue that Hell would be very boring (perhaps it was CS Lewis in the Great Divorce?).

And I was reminded of this when I saw this article:
Why playing in the virtual world has an awful lot to teach children | Society | The Observer:
One of the paragraphs mentions an early virtual world which was a paeon to virtual plenty:

It was a utopia, and it was boring. Not only did people prefer virtual worlds in which there were brutally strict limits on available resources, and where vast amounts of effort had to be expended to obtain these resources; they were actually prepared to pay money to spend time in these scarce worlds.

And there is the difficulty really: a lot of imagery about heaven talks about rest and seems to paint a rather static picture (a carol sung at Christmas has the line: "Where like stars, His children crowned/All in White shall wait around" -like some waiting room? -No thanks).

Now I'll admit that the attractive thing about these kinds of traditional images is that if you are feeling that life is frantic, full of oughts and musts, full of oppression, poverty, pain, then images of rest are good. But there really does come a point where boredom presents itself in life after rest. It's a good job there are also images of feasting and of fellowship. I'd like to suggest too that the image of a heavenly Jerusalem, a city, seems to hint at a life with activity, creation, interchange. Is it too much to suggest that 'heaven' (and here I signal that I'm aware of the dangers of that word, especially post Tom Wright) would be a world of growth, development and expansion? Is that part of the deal underlying the notion of disciples being given responsibilities to rule? Because if so, then the lesson of the virtual world that we appear to need limits to push against, can be applied to the Eschaton. Work doesn't cease, but the curse of Genesis 3 is removed from it. I note too that much creativity thrives on dealing with limitations: managing to convey the effect with paint; managing to do something beautiful with a voice of only 12 tones (in Startrek Voyager there's an episode exploring just that issue when that limit is transgressed), managing to convey beauty and emotion with 17 words and a metre scheme ... it's the limits that drive the cleverness, the creativity, the charm ...

Heaven with limits? Of course: wouldn't we remain finite? Of course there are all sorts of caveats with this: there could be (are likely to be) things that we don't, perhaps can't, imagine which would make these questions and ideas seem laughable. And yet, we have to note that some of the ideas and imagery already do seem self-defeating and oxymoronic. Just remind ourselves that it's 'through a glass darkly' stuff; that all we can 'know' is that we will be recognisable, fulfilled, and together with God. Still, it's worth reflecting that we should be able to cross 'boring' off the list of possible attributes, though.