A hint of His majesty
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Mostly true, isn’t it? Our default setting for life seems to be a relentless pursuit of keeping it, even if we know where we’re going. Why is that? I suspect God holds the responsibility, he placed “eternity in our hearts.” But we can easily get confused about that concept.
Funny
how the eternity you placed in our minds
encourages our desire to have it here
on this planet
in this life
yearning that others remember us
long after we’ve returned to dust
a life of long-time significance
a fruitless hope for most of us
Funny
how eternity in our minds
truly means only one
really needs to remember us
the omniscient one
God’s creation of life drives our desire to grasp it, and powers his interaction with mankind. All that we do and value and think derives from, “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).
We humans have the breath of God coursing through our lungs and throughout our bodies, and that intrigues me in two arenas. First, life has incredible value, and that touches both its quantity and quality. In part, our desire to continue to live flows from this. We don’t want to waste his grace gift. I suspect we innately yet often subconsciously realize this. As I write this, my brother-in-law Ron, at 80, struggles to live despite COPD, pneumonia and sepsis in his lungs, and puts up with the bipap machine to breath easier and to get back to his home.
Second, this speaks to life being innately physical and material, and the quality of it should be cherished, “Yet God…has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NLT).
We yearn for a meaning and significance and just life. The Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, gives 613 commands on how to best connect with God and to protect and serve our lives and the lives of others. Something in us resonates with the importance of a good life, one with meaning and significance and impact. Yet, like Ecclesiastes said, we just can’t encompass all that God does, or why. We realize that eternity exceeds our understanding.
That may cause our desire to be remembered after we’re gone physically. Yet realistically, within a few generations, the personal knowledge of us will fade. For most of us, we become merely a name on some records. Yet our yearning for more can find satisfaction in the omniscient one knowing us, as our breath returns to him.
Kick Starting the Application
How well do you recognize the eternal spiritual dimension of life in your decisions? How well do you integrate our spiritual and physical natures? Do you take comfort in knowing that God is the best one to remember us, to reward us for the impact we’ve made down here?