Sounds a little morose.

But, the truth is that we are all going to die.

I once heard it said that the two great adventures of life………are birth and death.

And this raises some very big questions.

Why? Why do we die?

On a very basic level, from the day of our birth, we were built to die. Our very design determines that we must, at some point, die. For many of us, perhaps most of us, the ultimate cause of our death is built into us at birth………high cholesterol, genetic predisposition to cancer, a predilection to risky behavior. In a word……..we are programmed to die. Whether you believe in God or not, it is clear that we are temporary. From the day of our birth, our clock is ticking.

When? When will I die?

When we are young, we kid ourselves. We have big plans. We are powerful. We are “the captains of our fate”. In a word…….we are……..immortal. We are too important……to our family, to our friends, to our job, to the community……..to die. And yet we do. Time is slippery stuff. How long a period of time is depends on your perspective. When you are waiting for something life altering to happen, a minute can be a very long time. When you look at the history of the earth, a lifetime is the blink of an eye. The short answer……..I will die soon…… too soon.

There are other questions……..what will it be like?…….will I suffer?……..what about my family and friends? For now I will skip ahead to the overarching question.

What does it all mean…….life, death, eternity?

And here we encounter the great dichotomy. I have often said that there are two great religions in the world……. intelligent design and Darwinian evolution………..the big plan and the big accident.

If you believe in Darwin, the “big accident”, then you can argue that there is no overarching universal “meaning”. Instead, there are lots of little meanings. And the best part is that you can assign any value that you want to any of them. So can I. Life means my spouse…….. my child…….the environment…….my job……..my stuff……my politics…….my rights……..my freedom. The conflict that arises between the values that we place on these different “meanings” accounts for most of the rancor in our public conversation. I think it is safe to say that Darwin is the dominant religion in daily life in America today……..even among those who identify publicly as Christians.

If you believe in intelligent design, things get much simpler, but in many ways much harder. Along with the idea of intelligent design……you get a designer. It is possible that the designer created all of this and then lost interest and wandered off to new projects…….but that seems unlikely. If that is the case then we are on our own and we are back to no universal “meaning”. I think it more likely that the designer created all of this as part of an ongoing plan of his. And the meaning of life…….the meaning of my life…….hinges on that plan…….his plan……..not mine.

I am a Christian. I choose the Bible as my moral code because it is the most widely accepted moral code on the planet and because there is enough evidence to convince me that it is valid. There are a lot of details in the bible and it is easy to get lost in the detail. Here are the broad strokes of the designer’s plan……… God’s plan.

Love God

Love your neighbor

Act on this love daily

There is absolute right and absolute wrong. But, this is determined by the creator……not by you……not by me. There are some gray areas but not nearly as many as you might think. To sort between right and wrong…….you must study the source material…….the Bible.

There is an existence beyond this temporal life. Death is not the end.

The creator loves you and wants you to succeed……on an eternal time frame……..on his playing field……….using his set of rules………a set of rules that he created for the sole purpose of leading you to success…….to happiness………on an eternal time frame.

But, what does success look like? This is critical. Because, in the final analysis, the meaning of life is determined by the definition of that success.

You succeed in life by approaching the designer…….your creator……God.

This bears repeating.

You succeed in life by growing closer to your creator…… God.

In essence, the meaning of life is to grow your relationship with God. After all, you will spend most of your time…….your eternity……..dealing with him.

Or you can ignore him…….deny him……..but, if you do……..you had better be right. Because, if you deny God, you will spend eternity separated from the love and joy of your creator.

And that is a good working definition of hell.

“The graveyards are full of indispencible people.”
Charles DeGaul

“Nobody Gets out alive.”
Jim Morrison

God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death ’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away .”

John, NIV

God gives us several promises. The one that stands out for me is the promise that everything is going to be OK……in the future.

The key to this idea is the distinction between the end…….and the future. The end implies that everything stops. For most of us death is our definition of the end. The Bible doesn’t use the term “the end” very much. When it does it refers to the end of our temporal world and by implication, the beginning of God’s timeless world. God’s timeless world will have no end. The term “the future” covers both the remainder of our temporal world and the endless non-temporal world of God…….paradise. “The end” is an idea that is limited to our world. It will not have any meaning in paradise.

The heart of the Bible is the business of surviving our time in this broken time constrained world until the end…….and doing so in such a way that we can reach and enjoy the timeless, endless future that follows.

The old testament is, in essence, God’s attempt to teach us how to live in such a way that we can reach him……..reach paradise. Because that is what he wants from us. That is all he wants from us.

It didn’t work.

The new testament is God’s “plan B”. It is a workaround that will allow God to populate paradise in spite of our failure to run his world the way he wants it run. I guess that God is patient too.

The world we live in is not paradise…….you probably guessed. Paradise is somewhere in the future……after “the end”. The trouble is that we have to wait. And that calls for patience on our part. You and I have to survive dealing with all of the broken stuff……. all of the broken people who come our way every day. In the final analysis, we have only two jobs to do in this broken temporal world.

Love God…….and that includes Jesus.

Love the broken people who come into our lives……every last one of them.

It is not going to be easy to keep loving when we are confronted by pain, loss, disappointment, rebellion, evil………..and even death.

But, we have to keep doing those two jobs until the day we die……until the day when we transition from “the end” to “the future”…………..until we reach paradise.

And that is a good working definition of patience.

I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God.

David, NIV

“you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

The angel Gabriel, NIV

You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus, NIV

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

God, NIV

This post calls for a bit of introspection.

In the final analysis………it calls on you to assess your relationship with God………and that can be scary.

Read on……..if you dare.

I have heard it said…….and I believe that it is true…….that the surest sign of the presence of God……..is joy. I see this joy from time to time on Sunday morning. I look around and see someone singing…….eyes closed, hands raised, and a face that literally glows with peace and joy. And I know that God is there.

Joy like this comes from being close to your creator. It comes from being in the place where you are supposed to be. It comes from being the person that you were created to be.

Do I feel that kind of joy?

Often……..but not always. It is hard to be joyful in the face of tragedy.

The other sign of the presence of God is peace. The peace that I am talking about is an internal peace……..a peace that transcends your circumstance. This kind of peace can co-exist with crisis. It can co-exist with tragedy. It can even co-exist with impending death.

Peace like this comes from confidence…….. confidence that the place you are in is safe…….that you are secure. How can you be confident that you are safe in the face of real tragedy…….even in the face of impending death? If you have a solid relationship with God…….then you are in his hands. And he has promised you a good future…….no matter what happens in the next ten minutes…….the next ten years……..even the next eighty years.
If you have a solid relationship with God, you will spend forever in the place that you were made for. You will spend forever in a place where you will fit in perfectly……..your true home.

And having that knowledge is a very good working definition of peace.

So……how do you assess…….how do you measure ……..your relationship with God?

You ask:

“Am I joyful?”

“Am I at peace?”

The stronger your yes is to those 2 questions…….the closer you are to God. Don’t be troubled if your score for joy is low today……..trust me ……..temporary circumstance…….. temporary tragedy can erode your joy. It will return.

If you can answer a strong yes to those questions, then you are truly blessed.

But……..what if you don’t feel joy…….or at least peace?

Then you are not in the place……..in this temporal world…….where you should be. Worse yet…….you may not end up in the place where you should end up. You need to reassess your relationship with God………your assumptions………your expectations………the amount of time you spend with God.

Because………the currency that you spend in order to buy peace and joy……..is the time you spend in conversation with God.

This bears repeating.

The currency that you spend in order to buy peace and joy……..is the time you spend in conversation with God.

If you ignore God………. don’t expect to find peace…..because this world cannot provide it.

If you try to run your life without God……..you may find a little scrap of temporary joy here and there………but don’t expect to find lasting joy……… because it just isn’t here.

So……..talk to God……..listen to God………study God………build your relationship with God…………and you will find joy……….you will find peace.

Because that is what God wants for you.

Because that is what you were created for.

You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.

Isaiah, NIV

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Jesus, NIV

 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

God, NIV

I’m 68 and my wife is 70.

I tell my granddaughters that we’re “older than dirt”……..and they believe me.

The unavoidable truth is that my wife and I have a limited amount of time left in this world.

It’s cicada season at my house. Millions of bugs that have been living underground for 17 years come out of the ground……..they bumble around for a few days then they die.

I think that my life is a bit like that. There is a part of me that lived somewhere else……a place that I cannot see or remember……….for a long time. I was born and I emerged into the light. I bumble around for a few years. Then I will die.

And that is where it gets interesting.

I am a Christian. That means that I believe in a supernatural creator……God……..and I accept at face value God’s promise that I will go someplace after my death. The Bible is a little short on details, but the cliff notes version is that there is a nice place…….and a not so nice place. The choice between those two places is irreversible and I will spend a long…..long……long time there. In fact, if you add it all up, my time in this temporal world is short in comparison……..so short as to be inconsequential.

It is hard to accept……but my life here, in the final accounting, is inconsequential.

So, how do I run my very short life? How do I handle this inconsequentially short slice of time between where I came from and where I’m going?

I run my life with my eyes on what is important………what is consequential. And that is the place where I am going…….next.

Oddly, it turns out that my ultimate destination…….nice…..or not so nice……….is entirely up to me. The heart of the New Testament is that I have been offered a free ticket to the nice place.

Free.

Whether or not I end up someplace nice depends entirely on whether I accept or reject the offer……. on whether I accept or reject the man who made that offer at great personal cost……..Jesus.

It has almost nothing to do with how “good” I have been.

It has almost nothing to do with how “good” you have been.

And that is not fair………that is not justice.

It is a gift…….born out of God’s mercy……….which is born out of God’s love………for me.

And for you too.

How cool is that?

My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 

Jesus. NIV

In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

A conversation between the “nice” and the “not so nice” places, as told by Jesus, NIV