Forthright Fixation

I don’t know about you, but when I’m consumed in to-do lists, grades, relationships, schedules, decisions, conflicts, budgeting, vacuuming, and pumping gas, thoughts about my future heavenly dwelling are not foremost in my mind.

Don’t get me wrong, God has definitely called me to be faithful in all of those things, but there’s a good reason why He doesn’t want me to be preoccupied with them. In losing sight of eternity, my service becomes obligatory, my aspirations stunted, and my days joyless because I am functionally believing that this life is all there is (though I would never actually say so).

Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Psalm 84:5 ESV

If you’re anything like me, your heart easily gets wrapped up in everyday life, in the Here and the Now. And if you’ve experienced God’s transforming grace like I have, you know that He often must gently peel away the papery layers of earthly obsessions from around our hearts, leaving us exposed and dissatisfied with this transitory world. It’s at this point that He gives us a fresh anticipation of something far better.

For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 1 Cor. 5:4-5 NIV

Let’s never lose sight of where we’re going. Let’s ask God to transform our perspective and give us, like Paul, an eternal fixation. Let’s explore everything the Word says about our everlasting home that Christ is now preparing. Let’s anticipate! Let’s imagine! Let’s look forward to that Day when all things will be made new and beautiful; when you and I and every believer will stand before His throne perfected, breathing in the full abundance of life, reveling forever in the light of His presence. Christ bought this for us!

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Revelation 22:3-5 ESV

I’ll leave you with the vivid imagination of a favorite author of mine (and maybe one of yours too). Though no mind can conceive what eternity for the believer will fully be like, these words somehow capture a small fragment of the joy we’ll experience when we get there.

    And soon they found themselves all walking together—and a great, bright procession it was—up towards mountains higher than you could see in this world even if they were there to be seen. But there was no snow on these mountains: there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one about the other, going up forever…
The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-colored cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase.

    And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan Himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty.

    Then Aslan turned to them and said, “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”
Lucy said, “We were so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”
    “No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
    “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are- as you used to call it in the Shadowlands- dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
    And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia 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: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

-C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

Filed under: Eternity