SEE LIFE FOR WHAT IT IS
Life is a façade. It’s a ghost of reality that all too often distracts us from what is real.
Did you know that if the atoms that make up our reality were enlarged so we could see them with our naked eyes and the nucleus of one atom were the size of a baseball sitting in the middle of Kennewick’s Lampson Stadium, the atom’s electrons would be flying around the city outside the stadium. Everything between the nucleus and the electrons would be empty, nothing, void.
Did you know that if all that space were squeezed out of all the atoms in the world so that the earth had the density of an atom’s nucleus, that the earth would be smaller than an apple in size? Mount Rainier would be the size of a grain of salt – a very heavy grain of salt.
Yet each atom is held precariously in a power balance, keeping the electrons from spinning out of the atomic configuration. Without this delicate balance, atoms would go radioactive and no life could exist on this planet.
What holds the world in this precarious balance? What keeps the atoms from collapsing and destroying life? Power, energy… And who controls that power that maintains this facade? God.
Meanwhile, each year, 98 percent of the atoms that make up a person’s body are replaced by new atoms. Yet we remain with many disfigurations and chronic ailments we had a year ago with our old atoms. What tells our new atoms to realign like our old ones did? We do, I suppose. Our subconscious, perhaps.
Does it seem so difficult, in the name of God, to tell those atoms to change and to reconfigure in more acceptable fashion?
But these bodies are the least of our problems. After all, they are part of the façade. We need to be more concerned with the state of our minds and our spirits than with our bodies.
Men – no matter how smart – who trust in their own knowledge and perceptions are fools, for their knowledge is miniscule compared to God’s. If you could part the veil between this life and the next for just 10 minutes, you could learn more than by reading all the books ever written on religion.
Maybe we should try that. Maybe, as we begin this new year, we should consider how much time we spend maintaining this façade and how little time we spend trying to see beyond it into the eternities.
To God, we must be like children in a sandbox, building our sandcastles. In our children’s fantasy world, their creations are real, but we laugh at their make-believe, as God must ours.
But I don’t think he laughs at our potential. Consider who we are – in reality – and the promises God has made to those who love him:
The Apostle John wrote: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God" (John 1:10-12).
John wrote elsewhere: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him" (1 John 3:1-3).
In his Book of Revelations, this same apostle recorded: "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. …And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. … To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. ... He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." (Revelations 1:5-6; 2:26; 3:21; 21:7)
The Apostle Paul confirms this grand destiny for those who can overcome the facades, the foolishness, and the blindness of this world. Consider Romans 8:16-18: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with out spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be glorified together."
If these things are true, we must look at earth life from an eternal perspective. Our reality should only be that which will still be true and valid and of value a million years from now. Everything else is fake.
The Lord will help us gain this new reality if we devote ourselves to him … if we pursue him into the wilderness and to the top of our Mount Sinai.
The Apostle Paul wrote: "As it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. … But the natural man receiveth not the things of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:9,10,14).
As we ponder what our lives are all about -- who we are, where we are, and where we’re going -- may we do so with a new perspective – even the perspective of eternity.