Friday’s thoughts
“What If We Live Forever?”
It seems to me we are living in a tension between two pieces of eternity. There is the prelude to our lives and all that came before we existed. We are the accumulation of the gifts of the people who have gone before us. Proverbs tells us “before the mountains were, we were.” There is a prelude to our being and when we ponder the longevity of our lives it is important to take that into account.
It produces a sense of gratitude to know there were lessons learned by the people who came before us that are instructive to our lives. We don’t have to make the mistakes they made. Also, there are accomplishments they made that benefit our lives. We live in their glory. We walk in their footsteps and we count ourselves as fortunate.
In the Gospel of John there is the idea that Jesus was before the world was. That was the prelude of his life, and as he came into his own he realized the debt he owed to the people whose lives formed his.
There is a prelude to our life.
There is a postlude as well. There is that which follows after us that is as much a part of us as anything that we know. We have a following; a hereafter. It is in the wisdom of our words that others will realize more after our death than they knew while we were living. There is a contribution to life we will have made that keeps on giving. Our lives do not end when we die; there is a legacy that continues.
Dag Hammarskjold once wrote:
“For all that has been, ‘thank you’. For all that will be, ‘yes’.” To live in the inheritance of the prelude of the past and the gifts and blessings of those who came before us is to discover the ultimate gratitude. To live in the future of the perpetuation of the good things that we have begun is to live in the eternity of forever.
What if we lived forever?
In a way we do.
What do we do with our inheritance?
How do we guide our legacy?
If you have thoughts on this write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. If you are willing to have the congregation read your thoughts and respond to them click on the “comments” box below.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Charles
