Life Unlimited

By Craig Vire

 

Suppose you find a magic lamp. You rub its side and a genie pops out. In gratitude for being set free, he gives you three wishes.

What would you ask of him?

Some might wish for money and wealth. But then, many peoplehave more than they need and still aren’t happy.

Some might wish for three more wishes. That’s an attempt to ask for everything you desire. But what we desire is not necessarily good for us.

I suspect many would ask for extended life. The moments we spend here seem all too brief. We long for more time to sharewith people we love.

Time is a problem for humans.

That’s mostly because there never seems to be enough of it. Ourlives are bounded by a point of beginning and a point of ending.We live at a hectic pace, cramming as much living as possible into the limited number of days between.

Our temporary lifespan is one of humanity’s greater tragedies.The writer of Ecclesiastes says God “…has set eternity in the hearts of men.” Something within us longs for life to continue indefinitely. When it ends, we feel cheated.

Time is an elusive thing.

With the passing of a moment, the present slips into the past. Welook back, longing for what has been but can never be again. In the process, we forfeit present joys.

The tide of time rushes forward, sweeping all of us towards anappointment with an unpredictable future. Fear of the unknowntoo often taints our present reality.

Our Creator is not bound by time.

He is without beginning or ending. God’s fullness is present in all the past and future so that he identifies himself as, “I Am.”He has no need to speak of “I Was,” or “I Will Be.”

That’s why God can take past difficulties that we are helpless to change and create something unexpectedly new and wonderfulin the present. God also speaks of the future as though it has already taken place. All time is present for him because he, as the Eternal One, is present in every moment.

Here’s the wonder of all of this.

God longs to share his eternity with us. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Through Jesus Christ, God entered our time-bound world. The Son came to give his life for the wrongs we committed against the Father. He endured the punishment of our sin, so we could know his pardon. God invites us to trust his Son’s work on our behalf, so that we can share his everlasting life.

What will believers do throughout eternity?

We ask this question because we are bound by time. We can’tfathom how to spend forever because we’ve never known life in that quantity. God longs for us to join him in an eternal relationship where the past and future are no longer concerns.

Imagine you are out to dinner with friends. The food istantalizing. Your beverage is refreshing. Conversation sharedaround the table leaves you wishing the night would never end.You’re immersed in fellowship and oblivious to the passage of time. Hours later you glance at your watch and ask, “Where did the time go?”

And that’s a good thing.

In his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller writes, “I wonder if that’s what we will do with God when we are through with all this, if he’ll show us around heaven, all the light coming in through windows a thousand miles away, all the fields sweeping down to a couple of chairs under a tree, in a field outside the city. And we’ll sit down and tell him our stories and he’ll smile and tell us what they mean (page 8).”

The wonder of time is that God wants us to share his eternity. Being with him will be all we could ask or desire. We’ll be captivated by his presence in a place where fellowship never ends. Time will cease to be. We’ll be liberated from its tyranny at last. In its absence, only unlimited life will remain.

I’m longing for that day.