Have you lost sight of eternity?  I sometimes do, the hope of my life hidden in God obscured by the responsibilities of daily life. Then, too, I can, and do, get so comfortable with my ‘stuff’ that any longing for my home in Heaven is forgotten.   The sickness of the American church is directly  related to her loss of eternity.  How many messages have you heard about eternal destinies in the last 10 years? Even Christian funerals are usually more about the accomplishments of the dearly departed than they are about reinforcing the great hope of the Christian – resurrection life assured in Christ Jesus.

Our obsession with comfort, with blessings, with ‘spiritual experience,’ grows out of the mistaken notion that we can somehow find a kind of Heaven on earth, a paradise in the present, with a carefully nurtured illusion that life will never end.  N.T. Wright observes that for centuries Christians walked to worship past cemeteries.  They entered a place used “weekly for prayer, Eucharist, celebration, for baptisms and weddings, for the whole worshipping life of the community … there is something wonderful and profound about entering church through the churchyard where are buried those who worshipped there in centuries past.”  (Surprised by Hope) This was a powerful reminder that what they did today would end and that they would enter their rest in Christ, awaiting the Resurrection.  Morbid, you say? Or, would it help us to grow past our insistence on a fluffy, happy, ‘don’t make me think about hard choices,’ religion that passes for discipleship in so many lives today?

What inspires great sacrifice, moves people to costly service, gives passion for building the Kingdom of God?  A profound grasp on the promise of our eternal life, on the irrefutable fact that we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, our Lord, to receive our just reward, and then enter into His glory for eternity.  (And, then too, there is that grim counter-truth of those who exist outside of His light and life for eternity!) But, in our quest for perpetual youth and beauty, all of our prayers for blessings and trouble-free existence, Heaven is forgotten.

All this is not to say that our entire Christian existence is other-worldly! That’s the other problem with us. We tend to be extremists. Resurrection life begins on this side of eternity!  “Walk worthy of the high calling,” the Bible demands.  The stark fact is that life in this present world will end. It is but the prelude to the story,  the opening scene for the unfolding divine plot to bring us from death to life, from ‘this perishable to the imperishable.’   And that great 15^th chapter of 1 Corinthians which celebrates our resurrection logically moves to this conclusion – “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:56-58, NIV)

If eating fine food, enjoying sexual pleasure, accumulating wealth, and attempting to create a life without problems is all there is to my existence, then I join the epicureans to ‘eat, drink, and be merry.’  But, I have read the end of the Book, and here’s what it says:  “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” (Revelation 21:1-7, NIV)

Because He lives, I too shall live.  So, I am oriented to eternity. How about you?