Key Verse: We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. (2 Cor. 5:8-9)
A century ago, George Bernard Shaw was, among other things, spending a good part of his time attacking Christianity and other faiths. Near the end of his life he wrote, “The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels, which should have established the millennium, led, instead, directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.”
How’s your faith? It’s true that our faith sometimes runs in cycles. For a while it will be hot, and then for a time cold until something stirs up the fire again. Faith is difficult to maintain because we live in two worlds. We live in the visible material world we see all around us and in the invisible spiritual world. One of the most difficult things about relating to God is that He is invisible. We can’t see Him, but we can see all the things that distract us from Him.
We would love to see that invisible world. It would be so reassuring. But our calling now is to live by faith, and faith is “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). Faith is about what we hope to see in the future and what we cannot see in the present. It is about trusting in the invisible world.
The Apostle Paul had come to a place in his life where he could write, “We are confident and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” Have you ever thought like that? Has your mind ever gone to the place where you would prefer to be in heaven than on earth? Maybe it was Paul’s sufferings that inspired him to think that thought. I have known old people who are in pain who have said the same thing. But what about the rest of us? Do we ever think of heaven as preferable, or do we have too many goals we still need to pursue on earth?
Do you see your life in light of eternity? A little song we used to sing went like this:
With eternity’s values in view, Lord,
With eternity’s values in view;
May I do each day’s work for You, Lord,
With eternity’s values in view.
If it’s hard to imagine being pulled away from this life and taken through death to heaven, can we at least go as far as this song and live with eternity’s values in view?
Can you stop at the end of the day and ask, “Am I living for the big picture? Have I seen my life today in the light of eternal values, or have I just been plodding through the responsibilities of the day? What have I done today that is different because I am a Christian? How has my life impacted my faith? Have I, like Paul, made it my goal today to please the Lord?
Prayer: Lord, help me to see the big picture. Help me to live for eternity rather than just for this short time here. Let me live in the vast landscape of eternity rather than the narrow room of this world, and may my goal be to please You in every aspect of my life.
Author: Lindsay Hislop was raised in southern Scotland and southern Ontario and now lives in the southern United States. He worked in the engineering field for 15 years (mostly in Canada) before pursuing an academic career. He has taught for over thirty years at Columbia International University. He also serves as an elder in his church, where he teaches and preaches regularly. He is married to a wonderful wife Pam and has two terrific children, Holly, who lives in Canada, and Doug, who lives in Columbia. His four grandchildren, Isaac, Madeline, Lindsay, and Dolan, are also pretty special. He likes doing carpentry and odd jobs around the house.
