Pale Blue Dot

A good word from David Murray reflecting on Carl Sagan's message.

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Live Forever?

This week Slate.com ran an article entitled, “Why No One Actually Wants to Live Forever.”  Subtitle:  “It would be really, really dull.”  Let me tell you why I both totally agree AND vehemently disagree with the author, Gemma Malley.

The article is mostly about the quest to extend the human life­span.  “We’re already living for decades more than our grand­parents.”  And who knows how future medical breakthroughs could elongate lifespans decades further!  But is that what we really want?  Malley concludes, “If we were to live forever, even if we lived in perfect health every day of our lives, it wouldn’t be long, in my view at least, before we were all lying in bed in the morning wondering why we should bother to get up and get dressed.”

I can appreciate this point—given a life with no Savior and no real purpose beyond oneself.  But I cannot appreciate viewing eternal life as a bore—given that I belong to Jesus and cherish his promise of resurrection life and ever-increasing joy in his presence forever!

Malley is on to something when she points to the human drive that insists, “We cannot die—there must be some way of cheating … the system.”  What she doesn’t consider is that this will to live may be a sign of something “transcendent” about beings made in the image of God and for the ultimate satisfaction of unbroken fellow­ship with him.  C. S. Lewis contends, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

But Malley does not seem to be willing to imagine what wonders the Awesome Lord of All Things has prepared for his beloved children in the age to come, or how profoundly satisfying it would be to revel in Jesus’ presence “world without end”!  Just think:  even now he’s preparing a place for us (what does it mean that the eternal Son of God is working on the future home of his people?!), and Jesus will come again to gather us to be with him (John 14:3).  Just think:  No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined what the Lord has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9)!

So the next time you hear someone say they’ll take a pass on heaven (“What a dull ordeal to sit on a cloud endlessly strumming a harp…”), pray that our gracious, almighty, and unbelievably amazing Lord would breathe life, eternal life, into their dead heart (Eph 2:1-5)!

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The Gospel and the Fear of Death

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not just for getting saved in the first place, but it is for living as a child of God.  And that gospel life we now live by faith in the Son of God makes all the difference when it comes to the looming reality of death.  John Piper speaks to this:

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The Casting of Crowns

At our church we recently sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” and read Revelation 4:8-11 together, and the Lord grabbed my attention afresh with the image—there in both the hymn and the biblical text—of passionate worshippers casting their crowns before him.  Think of it:  joyfully-reverent praise to Christ expressed by the throwing of crowns!

Here’s a Scripture preview of heaven’s exuberant worship: 

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever.  They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (4:9-11).

And here’s verse two of Reginald Heber’s great hymn (1826): 

Holy, holy, holy!  All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.

So what’s this business of “casting crowns”?  Let’s back up:  in the age to come believers will be rewarded for godly, faithful living by the granting of crowns (e.g., 2 Tim 4:8; James 1:12; 1 Peter 5:4; Rev 2:10).  And as those appointed to rule with Christ (see Luke 22:28-30; Rev 3:21), it’s imaginable that faithful disciples would receive and be adorned by the symbols of his royalty.

So, then, what might it signify to have been granted a royal crown and yet to take it off and hurl it down before the Lord?  A snubbing of God’s gift?  Hardly.  Instead, it’s the reflex of joyful zeal and love for Christ—that the All-Glorious Lord seated on his throne would be fervently praised!  And more:  that the reigning King of Kings would look out over the faces of his beaming subjects and see their gesture of pure, glad submission to his authority.  And further:  that the greatest reward of every citizen of heaven is not a crown or any other blessing given to us, but simply to be in the all-satisfying, ever-radiant, eternally-increasing delight of God’s presence! 

My mind gets going as I imagine the throwing capabilities of believers in glory:  how far and how fast will we be able to cast those crowns?!

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