When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun. 

        --from “Amazing Grace” 

July 6, 2010. I am waiting for my mother to die. As I was driving to the hospital from home, I meditated on the last line of “Amazing Grace”:  “. . . We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/Than when we first begun.”

 We live in a world of limitations – a consequence of the curse of sin. The curse of sin limits every area of life—never enough resources, never enough room, never enough time—particularly time. Time tyrannizes our human existence. “There is never enough time!” “I just need a minute more!” “I am running out of time!”

Here in the hospice unit, the shortage of time screams at you. The patients are running out of time. Family and friends are hoping for just a few more minutes. Everyone needs a moment more.

Such experience reminds me that we were never made for time and space as we know it. We were made for eternity. Sin has captured and trapped us here. Fortunately, God invaded our prison in the advent of Jesus Christ. Sharing fully our situation, His sacrifice began our liberation. Our preparation for heaven was begun. 

Heaven is the place of no limitations. There is always enough, even plenty. Heaven is represented in the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). A feast is a meal of unlimited provision. Heaven is represented by a house with enough room for everyone present (John 14:2-3). Heaven is represented by a multitude of people from every tribe and tongue, too many to count (Rev. 7:9). Heave is as consisting of limitless time, so limitless that to speak of time with heaven is unnecessary and even meaningless (Rev. 21:23-25).  

Here in northeast Arkansas where I live, we have the Ozark Mountains. Their foundation is karst topography—limestone bedrock easily eroded by underground streams and caverns. Some of the largest springs in the world are found in this formation in Arkansas and Missouri. Some pour from hillsides as great waterfalls. Others, like Mammoth Spring, well up out of the ground. Mammoth Spring issues nine million gallons an hour. It is a full size river, right out of the ground. Its fountainhead pours its life resource into the rivers and forests and cultivated fields. It nourishes man and beast, farm and town. Its supply is sufficient.  

Heaven is the presence of God. To be in heaven is to be at the fountainhead of all life; life at the source (Rev. 22:1-2). Heaven is so sufficient it is never depleted in any way. John Newton, the composer of “Amazing Grace” knew this. That is why he could write “. . . no less days . . . than when we first begun.” 

Heaven is so abundant that we will never reach half our days there. My father used to remind us kids to enjoy our summer break, telling us, “It’s the fourth of July. Your break is half over.” There will never be a “half over” in heaven. There will never be a day closer to the end than to the beginning because there will never be an end. Since heaven reflects God, it is unlimited in every way as He is unlimited.

In The Last Battle of the Narnia Chronicles by C. S. Lewis, the children go to Aslan’s land. They find it a place without limits. Like a mountain (Rev. 21:10), they could always go further up, because it is limitless.  They could drive deeper to its heart though they never completely reached it. So, they raced like the wind, free and unhampered, “deeper in, further up.” They experienced unlimited exploration of an infinite land for all eternity.

I stand here on the brink of eternity, holding my mother’s hand as she makes her step into that existence. I see eternity with eyes of faith. At this moment, it is more real than her fading pulse. This reality is growing more discernable by the moment. This hope blesses me with peace. The “no less days” of heaven are waiting!

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” Revelation 11:15

Postscript: I escorted my mother to that limitless land in the early morning of July 7. God’s grace and strength proved to be sufficient for every step of this journey.

For more insight to this topic, get the book, Heaven, by Randy Alcorn. Or read the article, “Heaven,” by Peter Kreeft.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 25:11

It is nearly a hundred degrees today. I am trying to think of a cool topic like the multiple inches of snow we had this past winter. During such long days invariably the television goes on. Many of us remember the classic Claymation version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Do you remember the character, Cornelius? I loved this guy. He was the prospector looking for gold and silver. Can you hear Burl Ives singing?

Maybe I’m just a soft-hearted fool, but I love getting a quick email from a fellow Centurion, friend, or acquaintance – a little nugget of gold shared by a thoughtful friend. Sometimes, when I am homebound on a quiet day, I click the “send and receive” key with nary a sentiment. I feel like Cornelius alone in the icy North Pole region clicking the ice—tap, tap, tap—send-receive – and retorting, “Nothin’!” when no one has communicated.

So it can be as well when we tap someone’s shoulder with the Gospel. We may appear alone, even a bit fearful of the monsters we are aware of “out there.” Regardless, we venture out, equipped with the tools necessary to discover hidden treasure of a soul ready for redemption. We may use various approaches or words, but when our “Jesus-is-LORD”—tap, tap, tap—returns empty, we tend to grimace and are tempted to give up.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:31-33

Harold Skimpole is just a child. Or so he would have you believe.

Skimpole is a fictional, colorful character in Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. A full grown adult, Skimpole describes himself as a man of “no profession whatsoever” who is dependent on the generosity of his wealthy friends for his own survival. In truth he is a lazy freeloader, but Skimpole has a different explanation for his lifestyle at the ready. He insists that he is an unfortunate simple-minded man who is incapable of understanding the complexities of moral obligation. “I am a child in such matters,” he is fond of telling anyone who will listen.

During one dinner conversation, Skimpole meets several other characters for the first time. Someone asks him if he desires to have a wife and children. Skimpole replies matter-of-factly that he does have a wife and has actually fathered many children. When the shocked dinner guests ask him how he supports this large family since he has no job, Skimpole looks stunned as if he’d never considered the question “With no profession, how could I?” he replies with a shrug. The now incredulous dinner guests then ask how his children survive without their father’s provision, to which Skimpole answers with a nonchalant smile, “Now that you mention it, I have no idea. But survive they do, somehow or other!”

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.—Matt. 22:37

When the world does not like you it takes revenge on you; if it happens to like you, it takes its revenge still by corrupting you. Your only resource is to work far from the world, as indifferent to its judgments as you are ready to serve it. A. G. Sertillanges

Ultimately, we all have to think for ourselves. We may receive excellent instruction at home, school and church—but there comes a time when we must answer the questions “What do I believe? What do I think?”

Answering such questions requires solitude. No one can think for me, no one can believe for me. Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” We are told to repent and believe, yet only I can repent and only I can believe. We start our spiritual journey with such a singular, personal act, and in one important sense it must continue that way. As I grow, I am surrounded by colleagues, mentors and friends who aid and assist me. Yet for all their aid, I must think, I must pray, I must love. It is true that I am part of a community and blessed for it and united to it. Yet I am also alone before God.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Ephesians 4:29

Networking gone wild!

Sometime in June 2010, the social networking giant Facebook (FB) expects its membership to swell to 500 million users worldwide, cementing its place as the largest internet service in the world. Not bad for an idea hatched in 2003 by a college student, Mark Zuckerberg, so he and his Harvard friends could better stay in touch.

Since 2006, anyone with a valid email address who is 13 or older can create a FB account. While college and high school students initially made up the majority of its users, the demographics are changing. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 47% of current FB users are over the age of 40, and the percentage of mature adults using FB is growing. Many find it, as I do, a fast and easy way to communicate with people we care about: it’s simply easier to send out a short message to hundreds of friends at one time, then to send it out one email at a time.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! – Isaiah 5:20-21

In the early 1840’s, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote two short stories – “The Birth-Mark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” [1] – expressing his moral misgivings about the claims of scientists in his day who, in the flush of rapid and exciting scientific advances in the 19^th century, were promising to solve many of mankind’s perennial problems. Both stories depict the work of mad scientists who aim to “[correct] what Nature left imperfect” – an inordinate desire for achieving a power over Nature which one character in “The Birth-Mark” sees as a sign of a dangerous and deadly hubris.

In both stories, the scientists experiment on people whomthey claim to love: Aylmer tries to purge his wife, Georgiana, of her one imperfection (a tiny, hand-shaped birthmark on her cheek), while Dr. Rappaccini makes his only daughter, Beatrice, poisonous in order to make her invulnerable to life’s dangers. While both women die from these experiments, there is one significant difference: Georgiana volunteers to be her husband’s lab rat, while Beatrice is denied a choice. From childhood, she is the involuntary object of her father’s twisted plans. For that reason, Rappaccini’s story is the more disturbing and sinister in its implications, especially for modern readers.