Eternal Life

"Very truly I tell you whoever believes has eternal life."  John 6:47

A few of us were reading through our devotional book "Calmly Plotting" and this piece by Matt Fitzgerald really stood out for some.

"You might be apprehensive about believing in heaven.  It feels naive.  And the church has certainly been stung by well-meaning critics who charge that Christianity's historical focus on the great pie-in-the-sky allows us to ignore the great misery here on earth.
But whether we're comfortable with his promise or not, Jesus keeps on insisting that "whoever believes has eternal life."  He doesn't define what the house of many mansions looks like.  So we get to speculate.  What is heaven like?
My favourite guess comes from old Reverend Boughton in Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead.  "Mainly I just think about the splendours of the world and multiply by two."
What would you multiply?
I'll take the sound of a cello, the smell of garlic sizzling in olive oil, the hum of my bike tire against the asphalt, the pleasure of a good haircut, the weight off my shoulders when I lean into my wife's embrace, Thursday at 5:00 on a three day weekend, the jolt of coffee, the smooth fold into a glass of wine, the ping of the radiator while snow falls outside, the leap into the lake and the feel of floating, the surprise in an infant's eyes when the baptismal water rolls slowly down her forehead, the sage embrace of home.

What would you multiply?"

This lead us into a conversation about how we need to appreciate what we have here on earth now as well.  That is what eternal life is.  It starts now - not when we die.  How do we live into God's kingdom now?

Happy Spring