Preparing for Eternity

One of the devotions in Soul Weathered is called Immortals.

And if I'm honest, most of my Christian life I didn't think much about eternity.

I believed in it.

I believed heaven was real.

I believed that through Christ I would spend eternity with God.

But I didn't spend much time thinking about what eternity actually meant.

Like many Christians, I think I viewed life as a bell curve.

You are born.

You grow.

You reach some kind of peak.

Then your body declines.

And eventually you die.

The end.

Or at least the end of what really mattered.

However, over time, something shifted.

This was partly due to reading authors like C.S. Lewis.

It was also influenced by reading books such as Desire by John Eldredge.

But mostly through God slowly changing how I viewed my own story.

I no longer see my life as a bell curve.

I see it as a launch trajectory.

Think about a rocket.

The greatest amount of fuel it ever burns is during launch.

Escaping Earth's gravity takes tremendous effort.

The resistance is enormous.

The weight is immense.

Everything is working just to break free of orbit.

But once that rocket reaches space, something changes.

It doesn't stop.

It continues free of all of the resistance and weight of an earthly realm.

Moving farther and farther into a reality far larger than the one it left behind.

That's how I've begun to think about life.

This life is not the destination.

This life is the launch.

We spend so much time worrying about the decline of the body.

The aging process.

The limitations of time.

The opportunities we'll never have.

The dreams we'll never accomplish.

And I understand that.

I've felt it too.

There are places I have always wanted to go.

The Great Barrier Reef.

Remote mountain ranges.

Corners of the world I'll likely never see.

For years that bothered me.

I would think about the adventures I would miss.

The experiences I would never have.

The places I would never explore.

Then one day I realized something.

If eternity is real...

If immortality is real...

If God's Kingdom is truly endless...

Then why am I acting like this life is my only opportunity?

The Grand Canyon alone could occupy multiple lifetimes of exploration.

Every canyon.

Every side canyon.

Every hidden stream.

Every trail.

You could spend years there and never fully know it.

And that's just one place on one planet.

What if eternity is not less than our deepest desires?

What if it is more?

What if the longing for exploration, discovery, beauty, wonder, adventure, creativity, and purpose was never meant to be extinguished?

What if it was meant to be fulfilled?

Scripture begins in a garden.

With God giving Adam responsibility.

Work.

Stewardship.

Dominion.

Purpose.

Creation itself was entrusted to him.

Why do we assume eternity means doing less?

Why do we imagine floating around endlessly with nothing meaningful to do?

The God who created galaxies.

The God who created oceans.

The God who created mountains, rivers, deserts, forests, and stars.

Do we really think His eternal Kingdom will be boring?

I don't.

I believe eternity is far more alive than anything we've experienced here.

I believe our deepest desires for adventure, beauty, discovery, creativity, purpose, and relationship all point toward something that is still coming.

Which changes how I think about today.

Because if this life is preparation for eternity, then everything matters.

How I love.

How I lead.

How I steward what God has entrusted to me.

How I rule the small kingdom He's placed in front of me.

My family.

My work.

My ministry.

My relationships.

Jesus spoke often about faithfulness with little things.

I don't think that's accidental.

Because perhaps what we're doing now is learning how to handle greater things later.

Maybe we're not simply counting down the days until heaven.

Maybe we're training for it.

Preparing for it.

Becoming the kind of people who can fully participate in God's eternal Kingdom.

That thought has changed my life.

Because I no longer see myself moving toward an ending.

I see myself moving toward a beginning.

Not a bell curve.

A launch trajectory.

Let me ask you this—

And how might you live differently today if this life is not the finish line, but God's preparation for an adventure far greater than you can currently imagine?