As Nothing

…Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

—James 4:14

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Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

—I Corinthians 15:51-52a

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So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…

—II Corinthians 4:16-17

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When you and I have been in heaven for ten thousand years, we will look back on our time here as nothing. Our pain will seems like a pin’s prick, our gain a speck, and our duration the twinkling of an eye. Even if you tarry eighty or ninety years in this exile, when you have been in heaven for a million years, the longest life will seem no greater than a thought. You will wonder why you said that the days were weary and the long nights dreary. You will wonder why the years of sickness dragged at such a weary length. Eternal bliss will overflow our present sea of sorrow!

We make too much of this poor life, and the fondness costs us dearly. Oh for a higher estimate of the home country with its eternal delights! Then the trials of a day would vanish like the morning dew. We are only here long enough to feel an April shower of pain. Then we are gone among the unfading flowers of the endless May. Therefore, make the most of the least and the least of the most. Put things in order. Allot to this brief life its brief consideration and to ever-lasting glory its weight of happy meditations.

We are to dwell throughout eternity with God. Is not that our Home? We are pilgrims because we are here for so short a space when compared with the length of time we will spend in the dear country beyond.

—C.H. Spurgeon, ‘Beside Still Waters’

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All this, here, my love…it’s as nothing.

It doesn’t feel this way—nay! It feels like all this, here, is everything—everything there is. But no, beloved. (gentle) We have it all backwards, my little one. (tender)

I think the enemy is the one who wants us to believe that our existence here is everything, that our life here is long, that our dwelling here is home. He wants us ‘stuck’ here—our hearts, minds, and bodies nailed to what is fleeting. He wants us afraid and doubting. He wants us grasping, flailing, clinging to what is only a mirage. He wants us to believe that what seems to be real here is real, that what we see with eyes of flesh is all there is. He wants us to be fond of this poor life—content to make mud pies in the slums, oblivious to a holiday at the sea; satisfied to eat scraps with the pigs when the Father has graciously killed for us the fattened Lamb and prepared for us a Feast!

If only we could see and know that our existence here is as nothing! Our years here, short, as a mist; our dwelling here, a flimsy tent; our life here, a mere pilgrimage, a brief wilderness wandering.

There, our whole life’s pain—all the prickles, the sin, the sorrow, the deaths, the tears, the ache, the unfulfilled longings—will be no more than a speck, beloved, an afterthought. (gentle) There. That. Him. He is what’s real and lasting, what we’ve been desiring all along. He is more real than anything tangible here, my love. (gentle) He is more real than the birds singing, the scent of lilacs, the water we drink and the food we eat, the ground beneath our feet. He is Final and Forever. He is Home. He is Rest, our precious Shalom. He is Communion and Goodness and Intimacy, Abundance and Grace and Mercy. He is Love.

O, beloved! ‘For a higher estimate of the home country with its eternal delights!’ That we might value and desire and strive toward Home with ever-increasing vigor and determination! That we might know how quickly these days and weeks and months and years will pass by so as to not be driven to despair! That we might buck against the lies that keep us nailed to what is fleeting and clinging to what is ‘less than!’ O, my love—Soon!

Soon we will no longer be part of this old world that is decaying and dying, but will be One with Christ and with one another: New, Perfect, Whole, wrapped up tenderly in Love—Beauty beyond beauty, Light beyond light, Love beyond love!

O, beloved! Let us not wallow in what is here today and gone tomorrow, please? (hopeful) Let us not be snared by the trap of our enemy, thinking on all we’re lacking on this brief, harrowing journey! Let us not grow weary in doing good and following hard after Him! No, my love! (resolved, determined) Rather, let us long ever more intensely for what is Real, what is Good, what is Forever! Let us fix our eyes firmly on eternity, that which yet to come! For this, here, beloved…what seems real and oftentimes feels like it has such a tight grip upon us…this isn’t Life—not really, not yet. (gentle) It’s a blur, a blip, a tiny ‘wiggle’ in the scope of eternity, my love. That’s all. (tender)

Only a few more ticks of the clock now, my precious one. And we will be with Him. (longing for that Day) All this, here, beloved (whispering ever so gently and reverently)—it will be as nothing.