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