God Is Hope
We should measure this world by the standards of the next. It is what I believe. However challenging our time here may be-the afterlife is the standard for all life...
Money, power, pleasure bring us temporal highs...and when they have been exhausted over and over again...the disillusioned letdowns lead many to give up all hope..to give up life. History is written by men who have walked away from the essence of life---because despite their brilliance, they would not accept the miraculous. That God exists...and that we exist to know God, to love God, to honor God in the service of others, so that we may be happy in this life and the next.
Great minds like George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, believed he had hit his pinacle...his purpose...declaring "there is nothing left for me to do." He marched upstairs to his bedroom and blew his brains out....Adolph Hitler shot himself, committing suicide amid the ruins of Berlin... Wealth and power...but no God. In the end, their free will, to choose this life, with no reverence for the next...left them empty...desperate for more...and feeling emptier and emptier. Amid all the superficial glory...all their self absorbed accomplishments...they felt hopeless...because to live without God is to live without hope. To live in a spiritual coma is to live without true purpose.
As Eckhart Tolle has described so well in his book, "A New Earth" we are all too often so consumed by the things of this world, so consumed by time, that we have forgotten eternity...our beginning, our home and our destiny. We have forgotten that at the second of our birth...the journey toward death begins...and the journey toward our destiny of eternal life.
And so- as we make our pilgrimage through this realm, toward our final destination...it is important to understand we are not simply walking shadows, as MacBeth describes...we are walking, talking, breathing beacons of light...and love designed to lead each other, through our example, to the full understanding that this life, this moment lived well...will carry us and others to the hopeful expectation of the next life...with God.
Money, power, pleasure bring us temporal highs...and when they have been exhausted over and over again...the disillusioned letdowns lead many to give up all hope..to give up life. History is written by men who have walked away from the essence of life---because despite their brilliance, they would not accept the miraculous. That God exists...and that we exist to know God, to love God, to honor God in the service of others, so that we may be happy in this life and the next.
Great minds like George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, believed he had hit his pinacle...his purpose...declaring "there is nothing left for me to do." He marched upstairs to his bedroom and blew his brains out....Adolph Hitler shot himself, committing suicide amid the ruins of Berlin... Wealth and power...but no God. In the end, their free will, to choose this life, with no reverence for the next...left them empty...desperate for more...and feeling emptier and emptier. Amid all the superficial glory...all their self absorbed accomplishments...they felt hopeless...because to live without God is to live without hope. To live in a spiritual coma is to live without true purpose.
As Eckhart Tolle has described so well in his book, "A New Earth" we are all too often so consumed by the things of this world, so consumed by time, that we have forgotten eternity...our beginning, our home and our destiny. We have forgotten that at the second of our birth...the journey toward death begins...and the journey toward our destiny of eternal life.
And so- as we make our pilgrimage through this realm, toward our final destination...it is important to understand we are not simply walking shadows, as MacBeth describes...we are walking, talking, breathing beacons of light...and love designed to lead each other, through our example, to the full understanding that this life, this moment lived well...will carry us and others to the hopeful expectation of the next life...with God.
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