Living in Light of Eternity

Have you ever wonder what this life is about? Why did God place you on earth? In the last post on this blog, we attempted to answer these questions. There we looked at the tragedy of the wasted life, one that never produced any lasting result. In this article, we will see if there is something more worth living for. No one wants to waste their life; rather, they simply don’t know how to spend it on something that will have an impact that counts.

Everything you do is an investment in something. Obviously some are better than others. The tragedy of the wasted life is spending it all on things that do not matter and are short-lived. The life lived in light of eternity is looking beyond that and asking “What can I do that will continue into the world to come?”

In Western society today, we are constantly urged to be the best person we can be, to have the most fun, and be successful. But no one seems to state the obvious: ten out of ten people die. And when they do, everything they worked so hard for will be totally worthless to them. Our time on earth, when compared with eternity, is a breath of wind. Consider this: “Think of it in terms of a dot and a line. Our lives have two phases: one a dot, the other a line extending out from that dot.

“Our present life on earth is the dot. It begins. It ends. It’s brief. But from the dot extends a line that goes on forever. That line is eternity, which Christians will spend in heaven.

“Right now we are living in the dot. But what are we living for? The shortsighted person lives for the dot. The person with perspective lives for the line.

“This earth (and my time here) is the dot. My eternal home in the New Heaven and New Earth—they’re all on the line.

“The person who lives for the dot lives for treasures on earth that end up in junk yards. The person who lives for the line lives for treasures in heaven that will never end.” Everything you own on this earth will never last.

K. P. Yohannan, in his book Living in the Light of Eternity, urged Christians to make their lives count. “I challenge you to take a fresh look at how you are investing your life—your time, your energy, your abilities. You have only one life. It is your choice (whether you realize it or not) how you will invest it. Will you spend it on yourself and your own pleasures or throw yourself at the feet of Jesus and tell Him, ‘Here I am—send me’?”

The next post will continue this discussion of not wasted the only life we have, but rather to impact our world. There we will see how to put these principles into our day-to-day lives, and practical helps for laying up treasures in Heaven.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Jim Elliot, missionary

Reagan Schrock, GOA blog manager

*Quotes taken from The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn, page 51, and Living in the Light of Eternity by K. P. Yohannan, page 12.