"...and the life everlasting. Amen."

Can you believe it?

‘Everlasting life’ is the answer to the question, ‘Christianity, why bother?’  There are countless other benefits to believing in some religion, even Christianity.  Love. Sacrifice. Equality. Justice. Mercy. Grace. Welcome.  Hospitality. Resurrection. I preach all of that. But, in the final analysis, Christianity fills the vacuum in my mind and heart which wants to know ‘what then?’  The corpse, the ashes, after they rise, what then? Die again, like Lazarus? Sit on a log and endlessly stare at bullfrogs? Float in some ether-like cloud of reality?

What ultimately and finally makes sense of Christianity for me is that all who die in Christ receive new bodies which actively reside, work, play, embrace, laugh,  praise God on a New Earth amidst New Heavens in an endless morning and evening, what is commonly referred to as ‘Heaven’.  I don’t know that it is a ‘place’ like we think of places. I don’t know that it is ‘next’ in the way we think of time because ‘time’, as we think of it, is no more for the saints in glory. It is an experience in which we know no anxiety, no shame, no guilt, no separation, no groans, no pain. No tears.

Our Resurrected Bodies will experience  what ‘no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart has ever imagined…’ (I Corinthians 2:9)  No one can describe that experience for you. But, try this: imagine your most beautiful time on this earth. Where are you? Who is with you? What are you doing?  How are you feeling? Now, imagine that scene as a gazillion times more beautiful, everything about it just thrills every fiber of your being. And the feeling never stops.  “Heaven” is still better than that, because you cannot imagine it.

When we recite with believers the Creed’s final words, claiming our confidence in ‘the life everlasting’, we are ‘groaning with all creation’, the rocks, rivers, plants and parakeets, that all of it and us will be ‘liberated from its bondage and decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.’ (Romans 8:21)

We were created to dwell with God. God is from everlasting to everlasting. (Revelation 21:3) Forever. Dwelling. With. You. “Amen”: meaning, “this shall truly and surely be”. Believe it.