For the past month, I have been writing a series of “Ramadan Reflections” – five posts a week during the month of fasting. I have sent these out via email, but I also recently posted them all here on the blog. If you are seeing a notification for this post in your email, you’re welcome to go back and read what I’ve written the previous month – the collection is available here.
I want to be captivated by eternity. I want heaven to be branded in my heart and my mind that I might live in its view all the days of my earthy life. When life on earth is beautiful, it is but a teaspoonful’s taste of the ocean of eternal joy. When life on earth brings grief or disappointment or annoyance it is but a reminder of the hope that we have for something infinitely better. Through faith in Christ we are destined to live a future of life without loss and desire without disappointment, endlessly feasting on goodness and fearlessly running toward all things beautiful.
“Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20). I long for that moment that I will open my eyes and – for half a second – wonder where I am, like I do when I’ve been sleeping in a new place. But then! Then I will see clearly that I am not waking to a world as I’ve known it, to a day filled with challenges and a body of limitations. On that day I will wake to a new reality – an eternal reality. I will see my waking was not from one night’s rest but from years of “life” that was only a dim reflection of LIFE as it was originally created to be! I will wake from earthly “life” into a LIFE that will never end, a LIFE without the confines of time or space or relationship.
Then I will see the beauty of Minnesota’s lakes and Colorado’s mountains and Jordan’s deserts and the hundreds of places on earth I’ve only seen in pictures. I’ll drink deeply of the beauty of creation as it is made new and sit for a moment or a thousand years in God’s timeless kingdom and breathe in the breath that gives life to all living creatures.
And oh! To be united with Him in unhindered love! To cross the dimension into eternal life and know Him in His dwelling place, to see Him in His splendor, to run into His embrace and feel His arms around me.
Let us live for that day. May every moment of this earthly life – beautiful or painful – serve as a reminder of the one hope we have, the one deep longing that we were created to pursue.
And yet, in the brokenness of a sin-filled world, I step outside my apartment building and look around. Who on these on the streets shares my joy-filled expectation? I think about friends I will message in the coming days with a holiday greeting, and my heart is heavy because at the moment not one of them has hope for an eternal future so bright as the one I see in the Scriptures. “This gospel of the kingdom,” Jesus told his disciples, “will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14).
So we, the yearning Bride of Christ, along with the Spirit, cry, “Come!” (Rev 22:17) and He assures us, “Yes, I am coming soon!” (22:20). And we ask Him to send us as laborers into the harvest field (Mt 9:38) so that the Gospel will be proclaimed among every people group, and He commissions us to “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel” (Mt 28:19). Then Jesus will be worshiped by every nation, tribe, and language (Rev 7:9) and together we will delight in the eternal beauty of life with Him.