Author of Eternity

Anticipation

Confession time, I have always had trouble being excited about resurrection. Not “The Resurrection” as in the climax of the Biblical narrative when Christ rises victorious, turns to death and mocks “where is your sting”, resolving once and for all the paradox of expressing God’s love and justice to a sinful humanity. That story is awesome. What I mean is that I don’t think I am particularly excited about the idea that one day I will follow Christ and be raised myself to everlasting life. Maybe that sounds unchristian, but I doubt if I am the only one who feels that way.

What makes this issue particularly challenging for me is that it sits more in my heart than in my head. It is just hard for me to be excited about living in a new earth that apparently has none of the things that I love about this one.

It is not that I imagine being given a harp and a ring of neon lighting, then told to sit on a cloud and practice playing harmony until I like it. Nor am I upset by the idea that I may never again taste bar-b-que, watch a movie, or play ultimate frisbee. It is not even Jesus’ claims that we will not be marriage in the resurrection, or any of the things that go with marriage, that is throwing me off.

As far as that goes, I’m actually pretty excited to see the new earth, which I expect to be everything this one was meant to be and more. I fully expect magnificent waterfalls, astonishing animals, towering mountains, and every other National Geographic image to be infinitely better than the ones we have now. And to live in a city that had needs no sun because the glory of God is constantly giving it light... that I want to see.

But as I daydream about all of beauty and wonder of God’s recreated earth, I find that my heart is using those images to console itself to a fate it fears I cannot avoid. Because in all of that perfection and beauty and bliss, I am afraid that I will have no purpose. And without purpose, how can I not eventually become bored, looking wistfully back on the days when I fought to be a man of God in a world that opposed Him, to proclaim his Truth to the nations, and make disciples for an army that fought valiantly against the powers of darkness?

Everyone loves a story about overcoming challenges, accomplishing a mission, defeating an enemy. We love to see the hero defeat the dragon, the boy get the girl, the adventurer accomplish the quest. Yet if there were no challenge to overcome, no dragon to defeat, what kind of story would be left? Would anyone want to read the story of “boy meets girl” if they simply met, fell in love, had kids and lived happily ever after, without a bit of trial or challenge?

Yet in a perfected earth, every challenge that we have ever faced, every battle we have ever fought, every enemy we ever strove against will all be ended. There will be no need to work hard to sustain ourselves, because we will have the Bread of Life. There will be no enemy to fight once the great commission is complete and Satan is forever cast down. We won’t even have those little sins in our own hearts to wrestle with, because our sanctification will be complete.

This is what my heart fears, that my existence will be basically purposeless because every purpose I have ever been put to will no longer be necessary. As a man I was made to work for my King, yet what place does a laborer have in a world that is already perfect?

Uncertainty

Maybe my desire for purpose is self-centered, and just another way of looking for fulfillment outside of God, but I don’t think so. When God set Adam in the garden he gave him a purpose, and I think the desire to be used for something is inherent in the way God created man. We were given the ability to think and to feel and to work, and to desire an opportunity to do those things is to desire that which God has called good. Though it is probably confused by my limited by a sinful mind, I think my heart is right to desire an eternity where I am still used by the Lord.

Here, as with many things in the life of faith, I am finding that God responds to the deepest questions of my heart, not with answers, but with Himself. The more I see of the complexity and beauty He has created in this first world, the more my heart learns to trust in the Author of all worlds.

The history of this world is one amazing story of God glorifying himself through his interaction with humanity. No novel has ever come close to the depths of emotion and wonder in the great epic of God’s redemption of his people. The villainy of humanity is rife with irony and despair as we blunder about, trying to save ourselves and create a kingdom cut off from the source of all life. And then, just when we realize there is no hope for us, comes the greatest twist ending of all time as God saves the world, at the same time winning for himself the greatest glory we have ever seen, by turning the greatest sorrow of the world into the greatest joy as he transforms death into grace and love.

This story has so many twists and turns, and most of it still hidden by time and space, that no human writer has ever conceived of anything that even compares. This is the story that I love, the one I keep re-reading to find all the details I missed last time. This story is alive, and it jumps out and changes me each time I contemplate even one small section of it.

It is the wonder of this story that makes me afraid to leave it. Because here, in this story, I know how God has chosen to write me in, and I rejoice to see how very good it is. I cannot understand how God will create anything to match that, no matter how wonderful or perfect he makes the next world.

But how foolish is it to fear reading the next book because the first was so good? How much would I have missed if I had stopped after read only the Hobbit, because I couldn’t imagine anything being better than that? What’s more, if C.S. Lewis, or J.R.R. Tolkein were still writing today and came out with another novel, I would order it this very moment and start to think that two days is an intolerably long time to wait for a package to arrive, because I have learned to trust those authors. Then if they wrote to me, and told me that this story was better than anything else they had ever written, I would pay to overnight it and disappear for the next week until I had read it cover to cover, possibly twice.

But isn’t that exactly what God has said to us? “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” (Isaiah 65:17). The Author of my favorite story has promised me that the story ahead will so eclipse what has gone on before that the life I am living now will be less than a blip on my memory.

I cannot imagine anything that good. That I will never reminisce and wish to be here in the best moments of fighting alongside my Lord for His kingdom against all the powers of this world? It is inconceivable to me. But I suppose that’s because I am only a reader, and not the Author.

I still do not know what the resurrection will be like. But when my heart begins to mourn the future loss of the things I now love, I will remember who is writing the story. I know I can trust that He is not such a poor writer as to abandon the characters he has spent the entire first book saving to a minor or purposeless role in the sequel. Instead, I will anticipate the next instalment of my favorite story, and all the more because I have no idea just where it might go