At the end of today we’ll get our kids in bed, catch our breath, then one of us will ask, “Ok, so what are we doing tomorrow?”
This is life for us right now. Incredibly busy. Each day filled with different places to be at different times. And half the battle is trying to figure out how to get who where when. On our good days when we’re not completely exhausted we can think about the week ahead. Or what’s coming next month. My guess is a lot of us are running day to day, barely able to think about what’s around the next corner.
But lately, this question has been on my heart. Not, “What are we doing tomorrow?” Or next week. Or next year.
But – “Where am I going to be a 1000 years from now?”
“Where are my kids going to be a 1000 years from now?”
And, “What will we be doing?”
“What will life be like?”
I’d love to go into a study here of the new heaven & the new earth. What the Bible teaches about eternity. If we’re just going to sit around & sing worship songs for a billion years at a time. (I don’t think that:). But I’ll save that for another time.
I think there’s something reorienting about this question. And I think it’s a good question to ask. I believe we really get caught up in the moment, in the temporal, in the here & now. We can get caught up in the drama, the who did what to who & the what are we going to do about that. It’s easy to do. I’ll probably get caught up in that kind of thing later today! But if we can keep one eye on Heaven… If we can stay rooted in the question, “Where are we going to be a 1000 years from now?” There’s something freeing & reorienting that happens in us. All of a sudden, certain things don’t matter as much anymore. People matter. Situations matter. But how we approach those & walk through those changes because we’ve got one eye down the road looking towards Heaven. Because at the end of the day, there’s really only one thing that matters. And that’s Jesus. Knowing Him & walking with Him.
For those of us with children this is supremely important. We can wreck their little lives consuming them with activity after activity. But the word of God reminds us that as parents – we are our kids primary youth ministers. It’s our job to teach them to fix their eyes on Jesus. I love this passage & I’ll end with it. What an encouragement & a challenge for us to live our lives this way – talking about Jesus as we rise & as we go to sleep each day…
“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (NLT)
