When you are four, success is not wetting your pants.
When you are ten, success is finding friends.
When you are sixteen, success is getting a driver’s license.
When you are eighteen, success is being able to vote.
When you are twenty-one, success is being independent.
When you are thirty, success is being married with children.
When you are forty, success is having solid investments.
When you are fifty, success is holding on to those investments.
When you are fifty-five, success is being free of your children.
When you are sixty, success is being independent.
When you are sixty-five, success is not having to vote.
When you are seventy, success is holding on to your driver’s license.
When you are seventy-five, success is holding on to friends
.… and when you are eighty, success is not wetting yourself.
Such is the cycle of life, the wheel of fortune – we live, we love, we learn to cry. Too soon we find how small we are, how little we know.
We come into the world naked and helpless and leave the same way. Whether we are rich or poor, famous or infamous, all privileges end at death’s door, the great and ultimate equalizer.
I once had a vision of heaven. I was jumping for a ball and then just kept going, shouting as I went that “we are going”. I remembered moving at lightning speeds until I arrived in a waiting lounge. My wife and children were already there, but they had a film over their eyes. My dream interpreted this correctly in terms of Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 13, “we see through a glass darkly, now in part, but then face to face”.
Then suddenly the scales fell off and an angel called us to a large wooden door. But the door was a mess. It was covered in graffiti, nails, oil, grime and paint. Yet when the angel opened the door, the opposite side was gilded, beautiful, sublime – a masterpiece.
Such is the cycle of life, the wheel of fortune – we live, we love, we learn to cry. Too soon we find how small we are, how little we know.
We come into the world naked and helpless and leave the same way. Whether we are rich or poor, famous or infamous, all privileges end at death’s door, the great and ultimate equalizer.
I once had a vision of heaven. I was jumping for a ball and then just kept going, shouting as I went that “we are going”. I remembered moving at lightning speeds until I arrived in a waiting lounge. My wife and children were already there, but they had a film over their eyes. My dream interpreted this correctly in terms of Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 13, “we see through a glass darkly, now in part, but then face to face”.
Then suddenly the scales fell off and an angel called us to a large wooden door. But the door was a mess. It was covered in graffiti, nails, oil, grime and paint. Yet when the angel opened the door, the opposite side was gilded, beautiful, sublime – a masterpiece.
Again the dream interpreted itself, revealing that the door out of this world abuts onto the door to the next world. There is no interlude. We are either in this world or in the next. There is no suspension or vacant wandering, for “to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord”. For many that meeting place with God is something to dread, although Churchill wondered if God was up to the ordeal. For the faithful, death is the prize for a race well run.
Fanny Crosby, the greatest hymn-writer in history was asked if her blindness troubled her. “No” she said, “for when I first see I will be looking on His face”. What a hope, what a peace, what a victorious life.
The angel beckoned us to enter, but I hesitated. “I am not worthy to enter”, I said, gasping at the sublime and transcendent glory that lay beyond. “You are right”, said the angel, “yet what Christ did for you has made you worthy anyway”.
Little boys float their boats as proof of their claims and boasts about the floatability of their creations. Well, the only proof of whether our lives can withstand eternity and endure its scrutiny happens when we die. Like Noah and his ark, we only get one test-run and it is a live test. The culmination of our life work, is the ultimate moment of reckoning for all.
That is when the proud, abusive and offensive will be leveled and the downtrodden righteous will finally validate their decisions to serve God.
So look up. There is a price to pay for following Jesus, but as the Psalmist said in Psalm 73, “we have gazed on His glory and seen the end of the wicked”. The same psalmist almost stumbled in his own faith until he saw his faith in perspective and realized that it will be worth it all when we see Him face to face.
Fanny Crosby, the greatest hymn-writer in history was asked if her blindness troubled her. “No” she said, “for when I first see I will be looking on His face”. What a hope, what a peace, what a victorious life.
The angel beckoned us to enter, but I hesitated. “I am not worthy to enter”, I said, gasping at the sublime and transcendent glory that lay beyond. “You are right”, said the angel, “yet what Christ did for you has made you worthy anyway”.
Little boys float their boats as proof of their claims and boasts about the floatability of their creations. Well, the only proof of whether our lives can withstand eternity and endure its scrutiny happens when we die. Like Noah and his ark, we only get one test-run and it is a live test. The culmination of our life work, is the ultimate moment of reckoning for all.
That is when the proud, abusive and offensive will be leveled and the downtrodden righteous will finally validate their decisions to serve God.
So look up. There is a price to pay for following Jesus, but as the Psalmist said in Psalm 73, “we have gazed on His glory and seen the end of the wicked”. The same psalmist almost stumbled in his own faith until he saw his faith in perspective and realized that it will be worth it all when we see Him face to face.
(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com
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