My wife baked me a cheese cake a while back but warned me not to open the oven door and peak. The kids in preschool are warned not to dig in the dirt to see if the beans they planted have sprouted. If you cash in your IRA or a CD too soon, a penalty will accrue. So the warnings go to those who are impatient and refuse to wait until the appointed time. I wonder if the same could be said of those who seek their heaven today instead of the eternal one appointed by God? What do you think?
Though in ages past people often longed for heaven to relieve them of the burdens of this mortal life, today we seem prepared to do anything and everything to prolong the mortal life now deemed good and postpone heaven as long as possible. I am not sure when this shift in thinking began to take place but COVID certainly proved it to be the direction we were moving and hastened its progress.
Yet we are duly warned by the Lord that our contentment with the moment comes at the peril of the eternal future He has prepared. We are meant to be hungry -- not for the treasures and pleasures of this mortal life but for righteousness and holiness, for the things of God that are eternal and by which we are anchored in the forever. Yet that is exactly the shape of Christianity today. We have not only succumbed to the fears of the present but to its allure. We trust science and vaccinations more than we trust the Word of the Lord to deliver us from death and bring us to the only life worth having eternally. We endow our feelings with the power of truth and our desires with judgment to decide right from wrong while forgetting that immorality comes with the price tag of immortality. We sniff at the gift of forgiveness of sins because we find the whole concept of sin distasteful and look for a God who will pander to the whims and yearnings of the moment (helping us find the ever elusive dream of happiness).
This is not new. Long before Jesus warned of gaining the world at the cost of our souls, Proverbs told us of the threat inherent to our preoccupation with the moment. An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end. (Proverbs 20:21). The short cuts to a moment of gaiety so enjoyed by our generation come with a cost. We are not to disdain God's gifts in the present but neither are we to value them over eternity or pursue them at the cost of everlasting life. That is the blessed tension of living in but not of the world. That is the goal and pursuit that is so misunderstood by the world and its insistence upon having everything now. That is the path that can be lived only by faith, by the sure confidence of the eternal that bestows the freedom to enjoy the moment without being caught up in it.
On the other hand, the things of God never grow old. By faith and the power of the Spirit we yearn to be in God's presence without end. Everything He has given us in the moment points us to the everlasting future God has prepared for those who have lived His appearing. Too slow, the world insists, come the creature comforts of the moment but faith responds too soon the things of God disappear. Faith teaches us to sing what the wonderful Eucharistic hymns tells us of the blessed Sacrament:
Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face
1 Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face;
Here would I touch and handle things unseen;
Here grasp with firmer hand the_eternal grace,
And all my weariness upon Thee lean.
2 Here would I feed upon the bread of God,
Here drink with Thee the royal wine of heav’n;
Here would I lay aside each earthly load,
Here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiv’n.
3 This is the hour of banquet and of song;
This is the heav’nly table spread for me;
Here let me feast and, feasting, still prolong
The brief bright hour of fellowship with Thee.
4 I have no help but Thine; nor do I need
Another arm but Thine to lean upon.
It is enough, my Lord, enough indeed;
My strength is in Thy might, Thy might alone.
5 Mine is the sin, but Thine the righteousness;
Mine is the guilt, but Thine the cleansing blood;
Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace:
Thy blood, Thy righteousness, O Lord my God.
6 Too soon we rise; the vessels disappear;
The feast, though not the love, is past and gone;
The bread and wine remove, but Thou art here;
Nearer than ever; still my shield and sun.
7 Feast after feast thus comes and passes by,
Yet, passing, points to that glad feast above,
Giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy,
The Lamb’s great marriage feast of bliss and love.
Text: Public domain
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