Ibonio D’Souza
At most, you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in eternity. Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Browne said, “but a small parenthesis in eternity”. You were made to last forever. Our earth is the staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your life in eternity. This life is preparation for the next.
The Bible says, “God has planted eternity in the human heart.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
You have an inborn instinct that longs for immortality. This is because God designed you, in his image, to live for eternity. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with that desire!
God’s Word calls your earthly body “a tent,” but refers to your future body in heaven as “house.” The Bible says, “When this tent we live in - our body here on earth - is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever.” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to Him in eternity. If you learn to love and trust God’s Son, Jesus, you will be invited to spend the rest of eternity with him.
When you realise that life is just preparation for eternity, you will start living in the light of eternity, and that will color how you handle every relationship, every task, and every circumstance. The closer you live to God, your values change. You use your time and money more wisely. You place higher premium on relationships and character instead of fame or wealth. Your priorities are reordered. If your time on earth were all there is to your life, you need to start living it up immediately. Death is not your termination, but your transition into eternity, so there are eternal consequences to everything you do on earth.
What is it going to be like in eternity with God? The capacity of our brains cannot handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. It would be like trying to describe the Internet to an ant. Words have not been invented that could possibly convey the experience of eternity. The Bible says, “No mere man has ever seen, heard or even imagined what wonderful things God has ready for those who love the Lord.”(1 Corinthians 2:9).
We have glimpses of eternity in God’s Word. In heaven, we will be reunited with our loved ones, released from all pain and suffering, rewarded for our faithfulness on earth, and reassigned to do work that we will enjoy doing. We will enjoy unbroken fellowship with God, and he will enjoy us for an unlimited, endless forever. One day Jesus will say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Mathew 25:34).
Sadly, the only time most people think about eternity is at funerals, and then it is often shallow, sentimental thinking, based on ignorance. Only a fool would go through life unprepared for what we all know will eventually happen. But, if you have a relationship with God through Jesus, you need not fear death. It is the door to eternity. It will be the last hour of your time on earth, but it will not be the last of you. Rather, it will be your birthday into eternal life. The Bible says, “This world is not our home; we are looking forward to our everlasting home in heaven.” (Hebrews 13:14).
Measured against eternity, your time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever. We should be “realising that every moment we spend in these earthly bodies is time spent away from our eternal home in heaven with Jesus.”(Corinthians 5:6).