Then
'Life now. Life then. Life after death?'
Today you're in university. Somewhere between the ages of 18 and 24. But what about Tomorrow?
You graduate. You get a job. You get married. You have children. You go through a few more jobs. You buy a house. Okay, THEN what?
You go to soccer games for your kids. You try to be a good parent and spouse. You watch your children go through high school. Even though Yesterday they were wearing nappies. You do and say the things your parents did and said, even though you vowed you never would.
You have a mid-life crisis or two. Your children graduate from uni. You become a grandparent. Someone calls you grandma or grandpa. You live out your life in leisure, drawing income from a retirement fund. You take walks in the morning. You work in the garden. You read the newspaper. You watch TV. You talk to your children and grandchildren on the phone. You travel.
Okay, THEN what?
Well, then, someday, you die. If you are fortunate, you live a relatively long life. Seventy to ninety years. If you don't get taken away prematurely by cancer or a car accident. But always, eventually, you die. Death is the Tomorrow that awaits us all, the inevitable Then that none of us can escape.
But is that it? Is there anything more?
Someday you'll be just a corpse. They'll bury your body in the ground. Or burn your body and put your ashes in an urn. The big question is, Will I cease after that? Will there still be a conscious ME somewhere? Is there really life after death?
In truth, we probably all hope there is something that comes after. Maybe in the smallest recesses of our minds, we are planning on it.
What are we planning on? A life after death of some sort. Some call it paradise. Some call it heaven. Some also talk of hell.
Another thought that many people possess throughout life, often subconsciously, is: I'm a basically good person. Therefore, I will get to go to heaven someday.
Is that how it works?
Many people think they are "good enough" for heaven. It's an assumption we make. If we haven't robbed a bank, or murdered anyone, or cheated on our taxes, we think we're just the kind of people God is looking for to populate his home. Surely we are good enough. At heaven's box office, we bought our ticket by being basically good people all throughout our lives.
But what if that thinking is incorrect? THEN what? What a thing to have been wrong about! What a misfire!
If you think you're good enough for heaven, there are two things to consider:
(1) Heaven is a place of perfection
Now that initially sounds like a great place to be! No pain, no suffering, no death, perfect happiness, all the time. A place of perfection! Let me in! I want to go there!
Or at least it sounds good until we realise that the reason it is perfect is because God is Holy and perfect. He is so pure that no thing that is not perfect can come into his presence... and that would include us...
(2) We are not perfect
Most of us would say we have a "skeleton in the closet." At least one. Something we hope no one ever finds out about us. A mistake in our past. A poor decision. A moment of weakness or stupidity that we'd rather not think about.
That's the extreme. But there are many other more common things we don't really want others to know or notice about us. It might be the "little white lies" we tell. Or how we talk behind someone's back. Or how we copy other people's homework. Or the unkind words we say to people. Or the unkind thoughts we have about people.
Much more than a one-time regrettable event, our lives, if we closely scrutinise them, show a pattern of wrongdoing. We often don't do what we believe to be right. And we often do what we believe is wrong.
To make matters worse, when we look at God's standards of perfection, we see that there is a rule that he gave us that we have not kept. That he (God) be #1 in our lives all the time. That no thing, person or activity should be higher in importance than God. What is #1 in your life? Your friends? Your family? Your car? Your grades? Your money? Your Comfort? All these things are good things but when we place them above God, we offend him enormously. The "god" in most of our lives is ourselves. All of us, even people whom we would call basically good, are also basically selfish and basically very imperfect.
Everything we do is seen by God. So that means there's no fooling Him. He's perfectly aware of all the good we haven't done (and yet could have), as well as all the bad we've done. He even knows all of our thoughts and all of our motives.
Thankfully, all hope is not lost. There is a way that we can become "good enough" for heaven. Do you want to know God? Do you want to learn how to become "good enough" for heaven? See Getting Connected.
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