A real, almost palpable, yearning attends me…My yearnings whisper, “There should be more.” I sense that I was meant to be more…better, that I was meant to live in a world of beauty, justice, and love; that I have a capacity to love and be loved that even my deepest loves and friendships can’t satisfy. I struggle to find ways to express it. All I know is that it feels like homesickness.
Jean Fleming, The Homesick Heart
Eternal Perspectives
The seventeenth-century philosopher, mathematician, and theologian Blaise Pascal gave a reason for [the feeling that something is] missing. Do you miss, he asked, something you’ve never had? Do you grieve the absence of a third leg, or the loss of a second pair of eyes? No. We ache only when something we once knew, held tasted, goes missing. We sorrow over the eyes or legs or arms we once had and then lost, not over those we have never had. So why is it that our heart feels this harrowing absence, this desolate sense of loss? What are we missing?
Mark Buchanan, Things Unseen
Eternal Perspectives
Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, and our love of Heaven.
Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven
Eternal Perspectives
Many of you know part of my New Years Resolution is to pause before potential problems and consider, “will this matter in 5 years?” I’ve been letting lots of little things get to me recently, and especially today. I could really use prayers from the Saints. Thanks Tumblr family.
“You said there would be joy in the laying down
You said there would be joy in the letting go
You said there would be joy in the giving of my life
and now I see.”
Off for a 3:45am to 2pm truck shift at Chick-Fil-A. Exhausted but so thankful and overjoyed at God’s providence. Soli Deo Gloria
We have come to a wretched emphasis in the Christian Church so that when we talk about the future, we talk about our “eschatology” instead of heaven. Once more I repeat that Christians are living too much in the “present now” — and the anticipation of better things to come has almost died out of the Church of Christ. We find ourselves so well-situated now that we don’t really need any tomorrow’s heaven. We don’t need to hope — we have everything well enough now.
A.W. Tozer, The Quotable Tozer II
Eternal Perspectives
Want to see the crossing of the Red Sea? Want to be there when Daniel’s three friends emerge from the fiery furnace? It would be simple for God to open the door to the past. Because God is not limited by time, he may choose to show us past events as if they were presently happening. We may be able to study history from a front-row seat.
Randy Alcorn, Heaven
Eternal Perspectives
Heaven will be deeply appreciated by the disabled, who will be liberated from ravaged bodies and minds, and by the sick and elerly who will be free from their pains and restrictions. They will walk and run and see and hear, some for the first time. Hymn writer Fanny Crosby said, “Don’t pity me for my blindness, for the first face I ever see will be the face of my Lord Jesus.”
Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions, and Eternity
Eternal Perspectives
On the New Earth we may experience adventures that make our current mountain climbs, surfing, skydiving, and upside-down roller coaster rides seem tame. Why do I say this? It’s more than wishful thinking. It’s an argument from design. We take pleasure in exhilarating experiences not because of sin but because God wired us this way. We weren’t made to sit all day in dark rooms, watching actors pretend to live and athletes do what we can’t.
Randy Alcorn, Heaven
Eternal Perspectives
Imagine sitting around campfires on the New Earth, wide-eyed at the adventures recounted. Yes, I mean telling real stories around real campfires. Why not? After all, friendship, camaraderie, laughter, stories, and cozy campfires are all good gifts from God.
Randy Alcorn, Heaven
Eternal Perspectives
Christian, meditate much on heaven, it will help thee to press on, and to forget the toil of the way. This vale of tears is but the pathway to the better country: this world of woe is but the stepping-stone to a world of bliss. And, after death, what cometh? What wonder-world will open upon our astonished sight?
Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening
Eternal Perspectives
May the joy that comes from giving God glory by living for others begin to wake in you and take you over.
Brandt Russo
There will be new planets to develop, new principles to discover, new joys to experience. Every moment of eternity will be an adventure of discovery.
Ray C. Stedman, The City of Glory
Eternal Perspectives
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
“The more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes.”
-John Owen
“I argue that the Cross be raised again at the center of the market place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a Cathedral between two candles, but on a Cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; on a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek; at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died and that is what he died about. And that is where the church should be and what the church should be about.”
From the book “Only One Way Left” (1956) based on a series of lectures (delivered in 1954) by the Rev. George F. MacLeod — 1895-1991 — Church of Scotland
Love this.
Whether our hearts are heavy or light, whether recent days have brought us joy or sorrow or both, there is something soul stirring about contemplating what God had promised us and what Christ shed his blood and rose to guarantee us—eternal life with him and his people in a land of never-ending wonder.
As W.H. Griffith Thomas wrote, “The consideration of heaven is no mere spiritual luxury, no mere intellectual dissipation, no imaginative revelry, but is really and definitely practical and suitable… and has a real bearing on our daily life.”
Randy Alcorn, Eternal Perspectives
