Today, I was not a people-person and I spent much of the day wishing I could just be alone with God. During the break at school, I looked for a place that I could claim as my own. I looked for a room or a bench that I could sit and pray and think without any interruptions. Instead of finding a room, I found a corner in the back of one of the buildings where I could hide from everyone. I really like that little corner.
My time of prayer did not last very long because I was at a lost for words. I didn't know what I wanted to say so I just sat there listening. Then after a while I decided to go find a book that I have been wanting to read. Instead, I found a book that was completely unexpected. I opened the first page and the book was dedicated to "that solitary individual". I immediately thought that's me.
I have been thinking since yesterday about living with an eternal perspective. "Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter" (Tim Kizziar). This made me think that as individuals and a church if we lived with eternity in the front of our minds, we would never succeed at things that don't matter in life because God would always be our focus.
"What is man without Thee! What if all he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all!" (Soren Kierkegaard, "Purity of Heart" p. 1)
Many of us just live day by day, but how many of us actually think about eternity on a daily basis? This thought of eternity makes me both happy and sad. I am happy because I know what eternity has holds for those who know the Lord, but it also makes me deeply saddened for those who don't and for those who think that they are Christians, but don't follow the Lord.
God says that He has given us eternal life through Christ so "if there is, then, something eternal in a man the discussion of it must have a different ring. It must be said that there is something that shall always have its time, something that man should always do" (Purity of Heart, p. 7). Eternity should always be in the front of our minds and in our lives, because God has made us new in Him, and through Christ we have eternal life. Therefore, if we have eternal life then how can we go on living without an enternal perspective. "For in relation to the Eternal, age gives no justification for speaking absurdly, and youth does not exclude one from being able to grasp what is true"(p.8).
We are without excuses. If we call ourselves Christians then our lives need to reflect God, the Eternal. Everything matters to the person whose eyes are fixed the Eternal.
"God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men,"Ecclesiastes 3:11a (NIV).
