Day 4: Forty Days in the Trenches Taking Grenades

My mind was everywhere today when I read todays chapter on death and thinking eternally.

First of all, the book of Ecclesiaties is one of my all time favorite books in the Bible. ALL TIME. For a believer, its a handbook. For the unbeliever, or the fence rider, its a book that makes you think, and leads you to truth about the true meaning of life here on earth in an "earthly" or "human" sense. Its more human than any other book, in my opinion. There's many books that refer to purpose, but Ecclesiates takes the cake in my opinion.

Anyway, this chapter speaks generally on setting your mind to eternal thinking. IT is important to always think toward eternity with God in heaven.

"How do you imagine heaven," I thought. This has been something on my mind since before I accepted Christ a long long time ago. It still pulls at me to this day.

We are such a vision driven species. We have seen on TV, read in books, heard about near death experiences about the perspective of heaven and its grandeur. The Bible gives us a little taste of it as well. THere is no possible way for us to envision heaven.

I think it is interesting how the Bible refers to the streets of gold and its indescribable beauty. Again, our human attraction to shiny things .... the Lord refers to these attributes in order to peak our interest about the physical riches of His kingdom. But maybe these golden shiny attributes are metaphoric? In a way, I hope so, as we are reminded daily here on earth of how unfulfilling material wealth can be. Or maybe it IS literal. I find that easy to see, yet hard to imagine, if that makes sense.

But the Lord also refers to the extremely eternal aspects of his Heaven - and this is what I feel Heaven's definition would be on earth anyway - is the absence of pain and suffering, and we will be surrounded by loved ones and friends, and we will not want or need for anything. That's heaven to me.

Maybe heaven will be perceived differently by each person?

Imagining heaven is just as crazy as trying to understand God's direction for our lives. We can't perceive His greatness or His possibilities. We can only take in so much at a time. We aren't to know about things until we get there - whether on earth or to Heaven.

Another thing that's hard to do - perceiving when and how we will die. I don't think its death itself that scares me - its when and how. Will I have completed all I need when I pass? Will my family be taken care of? Will my death be tragic or a quiet passing? I can't worry about these things, but its easy to let these things occupy a mind when you see death all around, and we are such "here and now" thinking. The world has our thought processes in such a box these days. its hard to imagine life outside our daily routine. We have our heads down, and we're hustling to make it through the day. Its easy to take our minds off the target of eternal without thinking morbidly instead of joyously. It just takes some readjusting when you find your mind thinking about eternal in black death instead of golden life everlasting.

I hope all this made SOME ounce of sense. I just wrote as I circularly reasoned. ha!