Hope that you spend your days
That they all add up
And when that sun goes down
Hope you raise your cup
Nobody wants to get to the end of their lives only to look back and say, “I’m not sure that mattered all that much.” I would say that I, and almost everybody I know, lives in perpetual fear that our lives aren’t adding up to much of anything.
Yeah, it’s fun to travel the world. To make a few bucks or a six figure salary. To hang out and have dinner with a few good friends. But at the end of it all, did any of it matter?
I have bcome almost obsessed with the idea of heaven. An afterlife that lasts forever. In the last few months my thinking on heaven has changed dramatically. I stopped thinking and dreaming about gold paved streets, and mansions, and in heaven owning every material want that went unfulfilled on earth. Why would God spend 80 years of our lives relentlessly trying to point our hearts away from materialism and towards him, only to turn around and give us everything we were denied? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
No, no, no. The last few months, my thinking has been shifting more and more towards heaven. And unlike any other time of my life, the vision is so compelling, so great, I honestly can’t wait until it’s my reality. Because now when I think about eternity I think about playing football with Emma, Richard and Rahim – and all the other Musana boys I love. And getting to do it every day for ten thousand years. (I’m going to be so ripped in heaven – finally)
I think about rock climbing with a bunch of the guys from Controlled Chaos and Rev. I think about climbing mountains and going camping with my best friends. I think about getting to go to Church every day for a thousand years – being lead in worship by the most passionate kids from Africa you’ve ever met. I think about going to Church where we sang “Holy Holy Holy” with a bunch of Spanish speakers and hearing them shout, “Santo Santo Santo” and realizing that Heaven will one day be like this but on a million times greater scale.
I think about getting to go hang out on the lake every day to relax. Or getting to build something with my hands and my friends. Or going skiing and enjoying some hot chocolate at the lodge. Or loading up with the best junk food, and the best people, and going for an epic long road trip for no particular purpose.
In other words, when I think about heaven, I stopped thinking about all the stuff. And I’m sure there will be a lot of cool stuff in heaven. But better still is getting to use all that cool stuff with my friends and family. Enjoying each other’s company and worshipping a really big God who creates simply because creating is fun. That’s why I think there are so many stars out there, and so many different species of trees and insects and animals. He created all that variety and all that stuff just because it was fun to create it.
And that’s what I think heaven is going to be like. The opportunity to love God and love other people on a grander scale than anything we’ve ever seen. And the chance to do it forever and ever, when time will never run out. I can’t even comprehend that.
The cry of my heart needs to be less, “I lived! Look at me! I’m doing important things!” to shift to be more of, “I love God and because of that, I love other people.”
Because while I’m convinced it’s fine to enjoy having a nice car, or a big house, or making a lot of money, and doing a bunch of stuff. I think life is just meant to be practice for heaven. We get to practice loving God, and loving people.
And that, my friends, takes the pressure off. Go ahead and go do something great with your life. But if it never happens, or you fall flat on your face and fail, or you die before you see anything happen, that’s a bummer.
But in 1,000 years of loving God and loving people, you’re going to have long since forgotten failing. Because whatever you did wasn’t going to last that long anyway.
But those friendships? That relationship with God? That’s going to last forever.
Choose what you do with your life accordingly.