As a youth, many years ago, my church did a musical called “Celebrate Life”. It was fun and meaningful. It was my coming into my true extrovert self, so of course I loved to perform. It was an important lesson that went right past all of us. You see as young Southern Baptists, we had been taught that salvation was mostly about getting to go to Heaven. How did we get this so wrong?
The very title of the musical should have gotten our attention. It was not called Celebrate Heaven or the Afterlife. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and that life in abundance.” He did not say, “I came to get you into heaven”. In the Gospels, it is always clear that Jesus was (and is) about life, not heaven and not death. It was always the plan, to learn to live a life with Christ as the example.
He taught us that his life was the key to the Kingdom. Somewhere along the way, the Church got focused on blood and not life. Focused on afterlife instead of doing the real work of the kingdom and living life as Jesus did. It is sad to think that we are often taught that all we have to look forward to is heaven and not how to live like we are already in heaven.
I have learned (am learning) that the importance of life in God is in the doing, not in waiting. How many times have I missed the moment because I was focused on the end of the journey. And by the way, Jesus also said that the end of the journey is the beginning of a new journey. We all arrive at a point (or an age) when we begin to wonder about what happens after. Jesus taught that there is not point in worrying about that, instead we should feel assured about that and focus on each day we have.
Here is a truth that we must all face: no one gets out of this world alive! What comes after is assured, we will be at peace, we will return to the Sacred, at peace. When that time comes for me, I want to be comforted by knowing I tried to do it right, tried to live the life I was called to, that we are all called to, with grace, humility, and joy. My prayer, as I get older, is that I can bring some of that peace to others, to help them get on the “narrow path” a little earlier and ultimately, before I am done, to teach as many as I can how to celebrate this life.
TMM