Eternity can be a pretty scary thing to think about. What happens after death? How do we know if we will go to heaven? What about this life on the Earth. What does it mean? Questions, Questions, Questions. And sometimes it might feel like its hard to know the right answers to these questions. So, we’ve designed this devotion to help bring some clarity to the mystery of eternity.
First of all, what is eternity? According to Merriam-Webster, it’s time without an end or a state that comes after death and never ends. Great, so what? Well, eternity is something that God is, God is eternal. He has no beginning or end. He was for eternity past and will be for eternity future. But what does that mean for us?
Well, knowing all this helps us understand who we are better. See if God is eternal, and we are made in the image of God, that means that we are eternal and spirit beings as well.
So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. – Genesis 1:27 (NLT)
So if we’re eternal spirit beings like God, what does this mean for us when we die? Well, that’s where our good friend the astronaut helps us out. See astronauts are able to travel beyond the earth and explore space. And when astronauts are exploring space, many times they wear a spacesuit.
Their spacesuit is really awesome! It helps them be able to survive in outer space. It helps them perform experiments and learn about things outside of earth.
In the same way astronauts wear spacesuits, we wear bodies here on earth. Our body helps us live and function here on the earth. When we die, if we’ve accepted Jesus as our Lord, our spirit leaves our body and goes to heaven to spend eternity with God. Just like the astronaut takes off his spacesuit when he is no longer in space, when we die, we take off our ‘earth suit’ or body and go to be with the Lord.
We are confident, then, and would prefer to be away from this body and to live with the Lord. – 2 Cor 5:8 (NIV)
When we die, we don’t stop existing. Our spirit simply leaves our body and goes to either heaven or hell, depending on whether we’ve made Jesus the Lord of our life. And just like the astronaut takes off his spacesuit when he’s done exploring outer space, when we die, we take off our body, and the real us, our spirit goes to be with the Lord.
This is great news for people who’ve accepted Jesus. They can know that when they die they go to heaven and be with the Lord. So the next time you see a picture of an astronaut, let it be a reminder of how one day we will get to spend eternity with the Lord.
