As I was laying in bed the other night, I was praying. I have found that prayer is often focused on things we are dealing with or considering. In this instance, I was thinking about Heaven. As you know from previous blogs, this has been on my mind and I have written about this life and the life to come.
This is where something came to my mind and thus my prayer. Each day we get up and go about doing whatever it is we need to do. We eat, work, play and then go to bed. The next day we get up and do it again. Throughout life, we do this day after day. The older we get the closer to the end we find ourselves. Again, I have written about this before, so we go through life thinking it will not end, but go on forever.
Scripture says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That is great but it means that my life did not end, yes this part of it on earth did, but I continue to live forever. Now that is the one thing that has us all confused. Because we live in time and space that is limited. We know there are beginnings and ends. Have you ever said that you wished something you were doing would never end? You just want to continue that forever. We all have made that statement and that is exactly what Heaven is all about. We will never want it to end. So how does something never end? This is a great question. This is one that people such as theologians and philosophers have considered and debated since the beginning of time.
When God says in Isaiah 55:8-9 He meant for us to understand who He is and who we are not.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
You might be someone who has that need-to-know mentality. I want to know I really do but in order to be at peace and to have God involved in my life I have to “let go and let God”. It comforted me as I was praying and thinking about this future in Heaven I am headed for, that I cannot understand something never ending. However, if I live each day in His presence I can get the idea of what something never ending looks like. It is simply a glimpse, but it is enough to provide that “peace that passes all understanding”.
I don’t fear death as there is absolutely no reason to as a Christian. I’m human so I get a little anxious about how it works and there is nothing wrong with that happening. If you put it in the right perspective, it’s like when we said earlier, we go through life thinking it will not end but go on forever. Well, that is exactly what it will be like. We will go through eternity and think it will not end, it will go on forever. It is that forever thing that gets us every time. We cannot understand it because we are limited and finite. God is neither limited nor finite. He is limitless and He is infinite.
You know there are some things that go on in life and especially now that I will not miss. Come on, politics and politicians, can I get an Amen? How about taxes and waiting lines? Kenny Chesney had a song that said “everybody wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to go now”. The thought behind the line in the song is that we enjoy what is happening and the people we are with. We don’t want to give that up, even though we know, even if we cannot express it, that Heaven will be so much better, infinitely better.
A thought to ponder,
Elbert Nasworthy
