Is life meaningless?

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.

My heart took delight in all my work and this was the reward for all my labour.

Yet when I had surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve.

Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.    Ecclesiastes 2: 10 – 11

 There can be times when we look at our lives and wonder whether we have achieved anything worthwhile. The writer of Ecclesiastes, thought by many to be King Solomon, evaluated his life and despite all that he had achieved (and Solomon achieved more than anyone else I Kings 4: 29 - 34), he wrote that it was all meaningless. In fact he says, ‘for a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless (2:21).

 At some point in your life, you may realise you are not going to do some of the things that you thought you might do or even wanted to. These can be hard pills to swallow. Perhaps you have not got married, had children, got the promotion you expected. Perhaps an accident, disability, ill health, divorce or redundancy have stopped you achieving what you thought of as your heart’s desire. Nevertheless that does not mean your life has been meaningless or worhtwhile.

We can look at our life and draw some wrong conclusions. If we evaluate our lives by the world’s standards, very few of us will have any achievements to commend ourselves. The world only values the outwardly successful, famous or beautiful. However if we look at our lives from God’s perspective with an eternal mind set, things look very different. God values the faithful, trustworthy, honest, diligent, persevering, kind, loving, joyful, peaceful person. What matters most is not our achievements but our fruit. 

 Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy says of those people who see their life as a failure; much of the distress of these good people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them; that they are coming to the end of their present life, life ‘in the flesh’ is of little significance. What is of significance in the kind of person they have become. Circumstances and other people are not in control of an individual’s character or the life that lies endlessly before us in the kingdom of God.

For the Christian, this life is not all there is. This is just the start and we look forward to a life in eternity when all things will be restored. The best really is to come and we must not look at our life or anyone else’s and see it as meaningless or a failure. We have a wonderful future with God and we must always keep our eye on that truth for God has incredible things beyond our imagination here on earth ready for us when our earthly life finishes. Our life truly is going from glory to glory.

 

Heaven - our eternal destination

There is no doubt that the more that I read and think about heaven, the more fantastic it seems to be. There are many books around with testimonies of God’s amazing intervention in people’s lives in the form of miracles and some of these have involved people being given glimpses of heaven. This not only encourages the individual but also us, the reader.

Naturally everyone’s experience is different but all of them are incredible and involve wonderful things. Heaven is indeed a wonderful place and one common theme seems to be that it is completely pervaded by light. One account that I read involved a man whose son had been tragically killed at an early age. He was devastated but God took him to heaven to see his son. He describes this incredible but not blinding light that emanated from everything.  There was light and life everywhere which is not surprising as the Bible is full of references to God being light and bringing light and life to the world.

However, whenever you start to talk to people about heaven, they think you are being morbid. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are going to spend eternity in heaven, if we have given our hearts and lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and it is a wonderful thought that we will be with him forever in this incredible place that he has prepared for his people.

I often wonder, especially around this Easter time, why the disciples did not understand or take onboard what Jesus was saying to them about being crucified and raised from the dead.  No one comprehended this though Jesus told them at least five times.. No one was waiting for the resurrection and indeed the disciples had great difficulty believing it until Jesus came and stood amongst them with his nail scarred hands and feet. Was there a veil over their eyes? Was the truth deliberately hidden from them or were they just like us, pushing an unpleasant thought under the carpet?

Dying is so full of negative emotions that in the west at least, no one wants to talk about it. Our eyes are earth bound instead of heaven gazing.  However, we are told to ‘set our minds on things above not on earthly things (Colossians 3: 2). It is not bad luck to think about heaven and dying but a realistic and exciting prospect even if we do not want it to happen today! We can have the attitude that there is so much to live for here on earth that we don’t need to think about heaven.

The truth is that everything we do here affects our heavenly experience. Our life here is a preparation for our heavenly eternal life. I believe that getting a realisation that our earthly life is but a blip before the main event of eternity in heaven helps us live much more effectively here on earth.

Christians should be excited about their eternal prospects. Let’s talk positively about heaven and how to get there. The world needs to know and God has chosen us to continue the work started by the disciples to tell the world that Jesus is the resurrection and has made the way for each one of us to spend eternity with him in the incredible, amazing place called heaven.

 

Imagine

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.  I Corinthians 2: 14

At both the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympics they used John Lennon’s song Imagine. It was beautifully sung by Emeli Sande and for many people its apparently noble sentiments will have deeply touched them. The song imagines there is no heaven, no hell, no countries, religions, beliefs - in fact everything that God has created. Then John Lennon assumes there will be nothing to fight over, so no war and we will all live as one.

These wonderful sounding ideas are of course deeply flawed and yet they are a perfect example of the secular humanism that underpins our western societies today. Secular humanism supposes that man is capable of being moral and ethical without religion or God. It is completely opposed to faith and believes every human being must carefully examine ideas for themselves based on science or philosophy. 

As we know nothing could be further from the truth and it is faith that pleases God our Creator.  Man in his fallen state is completely incapable of high moral or ethical behaviour without God whether acknowledged or not.

Instead let’s imagine a world where people acknowledge and worship God; a world so beautiful and perfect where creation dwells together in harmony and people walk with God. Let’s call it the New Earth. Let’s imagine a beautiful city coming down from heaven clothed like a bride called the new Jerusalem. Let’s imagine how magnificent it will be clothed with the glory of God. Let’s imagine the thick walls made of jasper and the city fashioned from pure gold like transparent glass and every gate a single pearl. How truly awesome that will be.

Let’s imagine this city with no sun or moon because God himself will be there and his glory will illuminate everything. The glory of the nations will be brought into the city and there will be nothing impure in it. Let’s imagine the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. Let’s imagine that on each side of the river there stands the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And let’s imagine that instead of no nations the leaves of the tree of life will heal the nations.

C S Lewis said, ‘It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.’  Let’s think about our eternal destination and imagine its awesome beauty and the wonder of spending eternity with our Lord and Saviour. Let this change our attitude to this fallen world and its lost inhabitants who believe that without God everything will be fine. Let’s instead show them the love of God and reach out with compassion and power to change the world around us – just like Jesus did.
 

Heaven is a wonderful place

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Colossians 3: 1 - 2

In the UK the main school holidays are just about to start. Many families will be eagerly anticipating their summer holiday which they may have booked months ago. I am sure many of them will have researched their destination. They will know what they are going to so they can make the most of their time away maybe with family and friends.

What is strange is that very few Christians so eagerly anticipate their final destination of heaven. If you start talking to anyone about death or heaven they think you are being morbid and want to change the subject. However heaven is the most amazing destination and should be eagerly anticipated by the Christian so much so that they desire to take as many people as possible with them.

The fear of death or at least dying grips many Christian souls – yet it shouldn’t. Paul said ‘²² If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³ I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴ but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.’ Philippians 1: 22 – 24. Paul was torn between being with Christ in heaven or staying to continue his labours with the Philippians. I am convinced this should also be our dilemma – to go to Christ or continue our work here.  Certainly whilst I am not looking to die in the near future neither do I fear it as I used to. I asked God to deliver me from a fear of death and dying and he has done so.

I am persuaded that heaven is a wonderful place yet so many Christians dread heaven imagining it will be one long, rather boring worship service. Or maybe we will be sitting around on clouds playing our harps. Nothing could be further from the truth and yet we do not take the time to research it and find out the truth.

One of the problems is that whilst the Bible says a lot about death, dying and heaven it is scattered throughout the Old and New Testament. There is not a chapter on heaven which we can read. As well there is a lot of apocalyptic teaching about heaven and allegorical writing and it is difficult to know what is hard fact and what is symbolic. Sometimes there are so many opinions especially about the book of Revelation that we just give up.

However there are good books on heaven and there is the Holy Spirit who will guide us into all truth. Let him guide your reading on death and heaven both in the Bible and other books and let him take away any fear you may have. We are going to spend eternity in heaven and it is very important that we prepare well for it. Hiding our heads in the sand is not the answer.

My desire is that we are excited about heaven and want to tell others how to get there. People need to know that they are not going to get there by their own good works which is what most people believe.  They need to know that God loves us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross to take away our sins so that we can spend eternity with him. This is the greatest free gift available to anyone who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ.