Continuing from Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life”, chapter 4: ‘Made to Last Forever’:
If your time on earth were all there is to your life, I would suggest you start living it up immediately. You could forget being good and ethical, and you wouldn’t have to worry about any consequences to your actions. You could indulge yourself in total self-centeredness because your actions would have no long-term repercussions. But—and this makes all the difference—death is not the end of you! Death is not termination but your transition into eternity. Every act of our lives strikes some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking. To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity continually in your mind and the value of it in you heart. There’s far more to life than just here and now! Today is the visible tip of the iceberg. Eternity is all the rest you don’t see under the surface.
What is it going to be like in eternity with God? Frankly, 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. It’s futile. 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)
However, God has given us glimpses of eternity in His Word. We know that right now God is preparing an eternal home for us. In heaven we will be reunited with loved ones who are believers, released from all pain and suffering, rewarded for our faithfulness on earth, and reassigned to do work that we will enjoy doing. We won’t lie around on clouds with halos playing harps! 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.”5
C.S. Lewis captured the concept of eternity on the last page of the Chronicles of Narnia, his seven-book children’s fiction series: “For us this is the end of all stories. . . . But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world . . . had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever and in which every chapter is better than the one before.”6
God has a purpose for your life on earth, but it doesn’t end here. His plan involves far more than a few decades you will spend on this planet. It’s more than “the opportunity of a lifetime”; God offers you an opportunity beyond a lifetime. The Bible says, “[God’s] plans endure forever; his purposes last eternally.”7
The only time most people think about eternity is at funerals, and then it’s often shallow, sentimental thinking, based on ignorance. You may think it’s morbid to think about death and not consider what is inevitable.8. Only a fool would go through life unprepared for what we all know will eventually happen. You need to think more about eternity, not less.
Just as the nine months you spent in your mother’s womb were not an end in and of themselves but a preparation for life, so this life is a preparation for the next. If you have a relationship with God, through Jesus, you don’t need to fear death. It is the door to eternity. ~Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan: Grande Rapids, Michigan 49530), 38-40
