Monday 3 June 2013

Seeking Jesus

As revealed on this magazine page a few months back, I’m always amused by these surveys that you find reported on in the newspapers, and another one caught my eye a week or so ago.  It was published in The Times, and concerned the answers 2,000 adults gave to a question relating to what people considered important in life – things to do before you die!  The list gave us the fifty things considered essential to ‘living life to the full’.  As I reach another birthday this month, it seemed wise to have a good look at this list!

Some of them were obvious – stop worrying about money; be true to yourself; concentrate on what you have rather than what you don’t have.  Others were bizarre; try an adrenaline-packed activity such as sky-diving; visit all of Britain’s historical landmarks; go outside more.  Rather too many were just immoral so I won’t list those.  One of fifty was to ‘reach your desired career peak by the age of 40’.  Perhaps you’d better be the judge of whether I could include that in my list of ‘ticks’.  A brief scan of the list suggested that I could write ‘done that’ alongside about twenty of the fifty.  I won’t be taking up sky-diving to get to twenty-one!

So what are the truly essential experiences that make life complete?  How would we answer that as Christians?  I suppose the first thing to say is that the foundation of a question like this can often be a wrong one to start with.  Lists like this start with the presumption that death is the end, that ‘you’re a long time dead’ and so in the mean time we should eat, drink and be merry/skydiving’.  It suggests that all the truly wonderful experiences of life can only be enjoyed before death and so we need to pack as many of them in whilst we are able.

One of the things that we have seen in our studies in the book of Revelation is that this sort of thinking is simply not true.  For the Christian there is something unspeakably wonderful beyond the grave.  To be in a place where we can enjoy God, His presence, provision and protection, for ever, will be a far superior experience to anything that this world can offer.  To be in a place where every tear is wiped from our eye is a glorious hope to look forward to.  For the Christian, life will be incomparably better after death.  That is why the Apostle Paul didn’t know whether given the choice he would want to stay or go.

If that is the case, it should colour how we approach life here and now.  There is nothing wrong with the ambitions to learn a new instrument, go on safari, visit 25 different countries (others on the top 50).  After all we live in a world where God has given us ‘all things richly to enjoy’ (1 Timothy 6:17). But above all we need to “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).  Ultimately, the one thing we all need to do before death is to get right with God.  We need to acknowledge our sinfulness, believe in Christ as Saviour and commit ourselves to Him. Only then can we really enjoy life in this world or have hope of the greater pleasures of the next.