about eternity...

So eternity has always been something that has pretty much freaked me out more than anything else. I don't often admit to it, but it has been my biggest fear. I know that this is ridiculously stupid and unspiritual of me - to fear the thing that is the selling point of many Christian messages: "believe in Jesus so you avoid hell and get an eternity of heaven instead!" I guess that's something I should be excited about, but from what I'd heard about it, or rather not heard about it, I honestly wasn't all that excited. I was scared, because to me, eternity was a boringly tedious, never-ending church service in a shiny place floating in the clouds somewhere with a huge throne up there somewhere with everyone bowing down before it in some sort of hypnotic trance... yeah, not exactly something I could relate to and not something that I was looking forward to experiencing - forever!


There were times when we'd have a Holy Spirit party, and I'd experience the amazing joy of being in God's presence, that this idea did become more appealing. Once I'd been in God's presence and felt Him so personally and tangibly, the idea of that forever seemed a little more manageable and appealing. But there was still the idea of nothingness and emptiness, where everything is God and God is everything, and we're just there, staring at Him forever, probably not even knowing who is standing right next to us.

That is one thing that I'd kinda hoped for - being able to meet people like Moses, Abraham, Elijah, Mother Teresa, and cool people like that so I could hear stories about their lives, but then I'd chide myself for being so unspiritual. There'd be no time for conversation: we'd be too busy staring at God in our hypnosis of worship. Don't get me wrong, God is perfectly awesome enough for us to just stare at for an eternity and get bored, but that isn't always the most appealing thing...

I've been reading this book "Desire" by John Eldredge that has been kicking me in the butt about a lot of stuff - seriously, if you can get hold of it, read it. It's amazing and so refreshing and inspiring and freeing. Over a couple of chapters, he touches on what eternity will be like, offering a different view than the one I'd always thought, but hoping wasn't true, probably because eternity is built into my heart (and all our hearts), so we know when we see it and when it's not quite right.

Something I've always had a problem with is the view that the world will self implode and be completely destroyed and obliterated by God before Jesus will come again. So that's all good and well, but if that's the case, then what is the point of us being here? To just save people's souls - fire insurance to avoid hell? If that's true, then why don't people get zapped up as soon as they accept Jesus? As God's ambassadors, I believe that we are here to establish and build God's Kingdom on earth, now. We're doing this in anticipation of the return of the King. If this is true, then there is a purpose to us being here, and the King won't come back until His Kingdom is established. Then He will come and set it in order, taking account of what has been done, of who was faithful, and rewarding them according to what they have done with what they were given. God is not a God of destruction, He is a God of restoration. So it makes much more sense for Him to restore the earth, rather than destroy it and make a new one. Maybe the 'fires of destruction and judgement' are metaphors describing the purification and renewal that will happen, when God will get rid of all the bad, and restore the good to it's perfect condition - to the fullness of glory as it was intended to be. This goes for all creation: the earth, the plants, birds, animals, fish, and us.

We were made in the image of God. At the point when this was said, all we have recorded of God is that He created the entire universe. He is creative. We were made in the image of a creative God - we were made to create and rule with Him, to govern this earth. If you put a blank sheet of paper and a vast array of art tools before a kid, they will immediately go about making a work of art. Do the same with adults, and they'll wait for specific instructions and make excuses that they're 'not artistic' or other nonsense. As kids, our instinctive nature is to create. As we grow up, we're told not to and our creative instinct is suppressed until we cease to believe we are creative and artistic at all. We all are, it's just expressed in a whole lot of different ways.

The people who are the most fulfilled and have the most joy are those that do what they do, not out of obligation, but because they love it. Dorothy Sayers says, "work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do". We will spend all of eternity doing what we love with no limitations or restrictions, because we will be ruling and governing creation with God, in His presence. So from that perspective - that our life now is our training ground for eternity, there is so much freedom with what we do. Taking an unending future into account, deciding could look more like this: "So, I'm going to be living forever, so if I don't get this done now, then I can get to it later". How ridiculously freeing is that??

It blows my mind, yet gives me that amazing sense of peace in my spirit that is saying, 'Yes! This is what I was made for.' Even if it doesn't make sense, it does somewhere inside of me. That sense of eternity built into me agrees with this because it is what I long for - to create alongside the Creator, doing what we both love, for all eternity. This throws such a different light on what life now is all about. The pressure is released, because you have all of eternity to do any and everything you want to do.

Like with Queen Esther, God says to us, "Tell me what you want. What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the Kingdom". He says in Psalm 2:8, that we only have to ask, and He will give the nations to us as our inheritance. In Psalm 37:4, He says that if we delight in Him, He will give us the desires of our hearts.

What are the desires of your heart? What do you truly long for? If our delight is in Him, those things are God-given passions, and when we long for what God longs for, we can go after it together, working side by side at what we love.

I pray that God will bring out those desires in us, and will guide us to a place of  intimacy with Him where we are able to dream with Him about what we truly long for and want to do. God, open our hearts to dream again. Awaken our desires for the things of You - those parts of You that are uniquely in us. Draw us close to You, so that as we delight in You, You will give us our hearts' desires. Thank You that we have all eternity to discover the depth of who You are and how You made us like You.