No one can ponder the great theme of immortality for an hour and not feel the stir and glow of a better, nobler life in him.
The grave is but life's winter, from whose darkness and chill we shall come with unwasted beauty. Then, way beyond this strange experience, as we look out at the window again, we see life going on, expanding, deepening, enriching.
How it would widen out all our thoughts, conceptions, hopes and plans if the walls that divide life here and hereafter were broken down and our eyes could see our own existence in perspective, stretching away into eternity, as real, as personal, as fraught with interest beyond the grave as on this side of it! How it would lift up, dignify, ennoble, inspire, awaken and deepen all our life if we could but hold the truth of personal immortality in our consciousness all the while as vividly and as really, as we hold tomorrow!
The grave would not then be the end of anything except of mortality and of the sins, weights and infirmities which belong to this earthly state. It would break up no plans. It would cut off nothing. If we see life only as a narrow stage bounded by the curtain that falls at death, ending there forever. But how different if we see life with the veil torn away! The future is as much in our vision and as real as the little present.
Death only sweeps away the limitations, breaks down the walls, shatters the crust of mortality, washes out the stains and then life expands into perfect freedom, fullness, joy and power. The translation of a Christian life from earth to heaven is but like the removal of a tender plant from a cold northern garden, where it is stunted and dying into a tropical field, where it puts out most luxuriant growths and covers itself with splendor!
Thus the glimpses we get through the little dim windows in the walls of our earthly life should give a new meaning to our existence here, and to all our multiplied relationships. With immortality glowing before us, our brief years on earth should be marked by earnestness, reverence, love and faithfulness. Soon we shall break out of our narrow circle and traverse the boundless fields that we see now only in the far-away and momentary glimpse. But it will be a blessed thing if we can get into our hearts even here, something of the personal consciousness of our immortality, with its limitless possessions and possibilities, and feel something in our souls of the power of an endless life!
[ J.R. Miller]
Psalm 73:25 ... Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.
Colossians 3:1-2 ... If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
2 Corinthians 4:18 ... While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.❤
