Explaining Eternity
I have a gentleman who likes to challenge the pastor (me). He regularly attends Wednesday evening for Bible study and prayer, which offers a discussion format. Recently, he asked, "Pastor can you please explain eternity to me." I responded, "I could, but it would take forever."
Eternity is difficult, if not impossible, to illustrate. I have, time and again, heard preachers try to relate just how long eternity will be with stories that always end the same way--"This or that will be like one second in eternity." I have been guilty of using such myself.
The problem lies in the fact that you cannot use time to illustrate eternity because eternity transcends time. It's like saying, "I could hear the concern in his face." Or, "I could see the trembling in his voice." Since eternity can't be measured in time, it can't be illustrated in time. It will always contain more than the mere passing of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, or millennia.
"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
The Final Frontier
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
If you had a pulse and a TV in the late 1960s, you probably found yourself glued to the set as your watched Star Trek and all the adventures of the Star Ship Enterprise. No doubt, you vicariously joined Capt. James T. Kirk and his crew as they “boldly” journeyed into space, the “final frontier.”
You’ll note, however, their mission was not to tame that frontier, but to explore it, experience it, interact with it, learn from it.
The spiritual frontier is a lot like that "final frontier" in the sense that it is wild, mysterious, untamed, uncertain and requires an adventurous and bold spirit on the part of all those who dare to journey that way.
“The spiritual life,” said Howard Macey*, “cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.”
Indeed, just because it is wild, mysterious, untamed … uncertain, does not mean that it should be feared, or worse yet, avoided. Jesus said that we are to be adventurous; that we are to boldly ask, seek and knock; that we are to steer directly into the mysterious spiritual frontier that awaits us.
Oswald Chambers aptly noted:
Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We imagine that we have to reach some end, but that is not the nature of spiritual life. The nature of spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty … Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.
Oswald Chambers (1874 – 1917) was an early twentieth-century Scottish Baptist and Holiness Movement evangelist and teacher, best known for the devotional My Utmost for His Highest.
*As quoted in WILD AT HEART by John Eldredge. Biographical information not available.
The Teacher Is Often Silent
When you find yourself in the midst of trial and testing, don’t fret. God is not absent. He is sovereign and is overseeing your trial. Just keep moving forward, doing the best you can.
And don't be surprised if His only response to your questions is a finger lifted to His mouth as if to say, "Shhhhh. Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). Remember, during the most critical tests, the teacher is often silent.