To Encourage You

Hebrews 9:12 “. . . an eternal redemption.”

I remember some years ago talking to a friend about eternal things.  I asked him if he ever thought much about eternity.  His answer was along the lines of “No, not all all.”  How about you?  Are eternal things something you give much thought to?  If not, why not? Could it be that the “here and now” somehow seems more relevant?  It’s all we know, so why bother with things that extend beyond that?  Why trouble ourselves with something so hard to grasp?  We have enough to worry about with taking care of our kids, paying the bills, or other more mundane things.  That’s what really matters, anyway, or at least that’s how our thinking can go, whether consciously or unconsciously.  But is that wise?  Think about this. If there really is an eternity to concern ourselves with, and the Bible clearly tells us that there is, have you ever thought about how it compares to our time-bound way of looking at things? 

You see, God doesn’t look at time in this way.  The Bible tells us that to Him, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). In other words, His thoughts about time are drastically different than ours.  He warns us that we need to think along the same lines, for our lives are described as a vapor in the context of the life to come. We are told that “you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14).  It’s like a friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen since our college days recently said to me: “Where in the world did 40 years go?!”  And that’s one of the reasons that the Bible is so critical to us.  It’s the only book that speaks to us from an infallibly infinite and eternal perspective, for it’s the only book that’s ever been given to man from an infallibly infinite and eternal God.  It is only in the Bible that we see things as they really are from God’s viewpoint, for that’s the way things really are in truth.  God alone can tell us of this life that “that’s not all there is.”  This one Who was and is and ever more shall be is the only One Who can truly speak to us from such an eternal perspective.  And when we think about how eternity compares to the vapor of this life, isn’t it only reasonable that we should make the study of the Bible one of the primary focuses of our lives?  There is no other thing that’s available to us that is even remotely like this book.  There is no other text that comes to us from an infinite and eternal perspective like this does. 

May God help us to have the wisdom to look to Him about the way things really are, i.e., not from the very limited perspective of what we, in and of ourselves, can ever know but from the perspective of the infinite and eternal God Who alone created time, and as such, Who alone comes to us from a perspective that is outside of it.