Tag: eternity

True Hope in a Dismal World

We live in a world of COVID exhaustion, political turmoil, and cultural upheaval. Many people over the past year have let hope slip. They view all of these problems and descend into despair. But for Christians, it’s not supposed to be that way. Of all people, we should be the people of hope. Yes, that can be cliched. It’s often easy to throw out verbal assurances that have little meaning. As we’re reminded in the book of James, What good… Read more »

Being Ready for the Transition from Temporary to Eternal

How do we respond when we think we are on the edge of death? It happened to me once in a car accident on a lonely, and icy, country road. As my car careened across the middle line straight into the headlights of a car coming from the other direction (we were the only cars anywhere in sight), I wondered if this was it. Was I ready spiritually to be face-to-face with my Lord? As I was teaching my course… Read more »

Politics & Sick Societies

I was perusing C. S. Lewis’s essays in the volume The Weight of Glory this past week and came across something I had read before and had highlighted in that earlier reading (that’s what professors do when they read–they highlight things so they’re easier to find again). It was in the essay titled “Membership.” The entire essay deals with the individual vs. the collective and the proper understanding of the Body of Christ and how that’s not the same as… Read more »

Where Your Treasure Is

I would have to say that those who express doubts about the legitimacy of the “virus war” we now face are becoming fewer in number. Serious people know when something is serious. Serious people take appropriate action to mitigate the seriousness of a situation. Yet even the mature, serious people know when something is not entirely in their hands, and that they cannot control everything. Some may descend into fear over what awaits. Psalm 55 speaks of fear in words… Read more »

Perspective on the “Virus War” & Eternity

Along with probably all, or nearly all, of my professorial colleagues in the US and in many other countries, I am homebound now, completing my courses remotely. Is this something that is important to do in light of the current global pandemic? Shouldn’t we perhaps just drop all this “learning stuff” and devote our whole selves to the “virus war”? C. S. Lewis dealt with this same issue as WWII ramped up. Should the university continue teaching during the crisis?… Read more »

A Meditation on Our “Temporary Stay”

When I was in Israel in 1997 (could it really have been that long ago?), I met Mr. David Stern. Our group had dinner at his home, and I recall him playing the piano for us. But the main reason we were there was that he had recently completed translating the New Testament into a Jewish mindset. Throughout the text, he used Jewish words to help give the flavor of the actual time when Jesus walked in the land. I… Read more »

This World’s Last Night

“The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is equally relevant.” We live so much in the “present” that we often neglect what we say we believe about the transitory nature of this world. We have an eternity that awaits us, yet… Read more »