Eternity 101

I have to admit, writing this post seems a bit like a trick question. After all, everyone knows what eternity is, right? Um, actually, no. I was surprised a couple of months ago when a friend asked me what eternity is. So baffled was I, that I somehow sputtered an answer whilst pondering, “what do they teach kids in school these days?” No, all jokes aside, I gave a fairly weak response so today’s post is an attempt to explain what eternity is – in 500 words, or less.

As we have 412 words remaining, I’ll get right to it. Eternity is the rest of our existence after life on Earth ends. What eternity is does not matter so much as where you spend it. Depending on what you choose to do with your time here on Earth, you’ll either spend eternity with God forever and ever (awph!) or apart from God (nooo!). In other words, that oh-so-famous concept of Heaven and Hell. Put like that, it seems that we should rush to live a holier life so we can get into Heaven. Whilst I would never knock living righteously, I think we need to move on from the “getting-into-heaven” mentality to thinking about “living-the-life” when we get there.

#DoItForTheCrown
Okay, it might be hard to picture what it will look like but what we do know about eternity makes it worth investing in. First of all, as I’ve already mentioned, we get to spend the rest of forever with bae aka Jesus. As if this wasn’t enough, our mutual best friend is building mansions for us (I like to imagine mine has a shoe closet of heavenly proportions and looks just like my dream-house on Pinterest) and has promised us rewards for standing for standing firm in Him (Revelations 2-3). He also has crowns ready to be awarded to those who loved the Lord’s appearing, exercised self control, endured patiently through trials, were Godly leaders or who brought others into the love and light of Jesus.

Yes, I’ve painted you a picture of utopia – you have a big shoe closet house, a couple crowns and some prizes but let’s go back to the very beginning.

“There are no CROWN-WEARERS in Heaven who were not CROSS-BEARERS here below.”

– Charles Spurgeon

Remember when I said that what you do in this existence determines where you spend eternity? Well what you do now also determines how you spend eternity. If you want a pretty tiara or a manly man-crown, you’ll have to work for it here first.

This is achieved by investing in eternity. Pursuing the Kingdom of God aggressively and not being distracted by the cares of this world. Example: the world says consume consume consume. Most of the time, we live for now (YOLO) or the future that we can see, which may seem like sensible, long-term decision making but is actually, from an eternity perspective, rather short sighted. We’re so focused on this life, that we fail to consider what happens after. In contrast, investing in the Kingdom of God is to give give give. And it’s not just your money that you invest with. You invest your time (praying, helping others etc.) and your God-given talents by using them for Him. Every time that you sacrifice and serve, it’s noted and you create treasures stored up for you in heaven.

So, in closing, the one thing to take away from this post is that it’s important to live from an eternity perspective. When you make life choices, evaluate them from an eternity point of view. You’ll find that life becomes very different and that your priorities change. For the better. There you have it. Eternity. In slightly more than 500 words.

P.S. I know it was short. If you want to know more, Francis Chan explains this concept really well in this here video, as does Rick Warren in ‘The Purpose Driven Life’.

P.P.S These post scripts, quotes and my crossed out witticisms do not form part of the word count…otherwise we’re way over 500 words. Way, way way over.