Living right now – with an eternal perspective .......... Parables 637

April 27, 1999

Christians are supposed to live with an “eternal perspective” (God says so) but mostly our efforts bring on accusations of having a “pie in the sky” religion.

An eternal perspective is an enigma. Who can define eternity? Is time measured there (or then)? How can something be without beginning or end? Perhaps it is a constant “now”? The Bible says God is eternal. Does He experience past, present and future all together? Besides, the very word “eternal” suggests that nothing changes. How can that be?

I cannot wrap my mind around these ideas. I had a beginning and I am stuck in time. Yesterday is a memory, today is a scramble and tomorrow is a mystery — but most of us can keep all three in their own boxes.

Changelessness is also unimaginable. Life is filled with change. I am not the same today as I was twenty years ago or even last week. What will the next twenty years will bring? Probably more wrinkles and hopefully a shorter to-do list, but nothing is certain.

God lives outside our box of time and constant change. When He peers in, what does He see? How does He view our past? Our busy days? Our future? Our changes? The Bible says if I can grasp His view of these things, then will I understand how to live with an eternal perspective.

As for the past, I could look back on the negative parts with guilt and shame but God looks at my past and says, “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” This is His way of saying He no longer holds all my mistakes against me. Once sin is confessed, it no longer clouds His mind or mine, now or in the future. If I can think like He does about my sin, then I too will hold an eternal perspective.

When I look at today, all I see is busyness and heavy responsibilities but God looks at it with interest, not only in what I do but why I do it. He says that in eternity, all my activities are examined according to their foundation. That is, if my busyness is built on Jesus Christ, then when those activities are “revealed and tested with fire” they will be “rewarded.” The Bible is not specific about what those rewards might be, but it does say all the useless stuff will be burned up.

If I can think about my activities in those terms, I have to ask whether or not they fit into God’s will, and also why I do them. This makes an eternal perspective is very practical. For one thing, my day and my attitudes can be greatly simplified. If something is no help to others or will not make me more like Jesus, then why do it?

This is not as easy at it sounds. Some activities are not wrong but pointless. Others are expected but seem without eternal value. For instance, cleaning out the frig today will not matter a hundred years from now. However, having the right foundation means I will do it for my family and for the Lord with a Christlike attitude and in obedience to His Spirit. When I build even ordinary duties on the foundation of Christ, the Bible says He gives them eternal value. Not only that, this is God’s focal point concerning change. His eternal goal for me is that I become like His Son. When I cooperate, I am living with an eternal perspective.

As for the future, I see it as if looking through colored glass. The Apostle Paul even wrote “now we see through a glass darkly.” The future is a faint shape of what others mock as “pie in the sky” and although I cannot quite make it out, Paul adds that some day “we will know fully.”

Yet God does not intend that my focus be on the someday without letting this heavenly hope give excitement to each day right now. While I can look forward to living forever with Him in His eternal realm, God also wants me to wake up every morning thinking that Jesus might come today and then live that day as if He will. And if He does not, I still get a taste of the eternal; no matter what the day brings, I have it on God’s promises that He is involved. For me, that is a huge slice of what it means to live with an eternal perspective.