long tomorrow

My cousin, Krecia, left us to go to heaven last month. She had a long battle with cancer. I was just reading her last email to me, and it made me think about heaven and eternity again.

I have often wondered how our loved ones, who go to heaven before us, could not help but miss us. I have recently had the thought, however, that in the light of eternity, one hundred earthly years would not even seem like a small “bump” in time. Maybe when you get to heaven, in a blink of the eye, you turn around, and there are all your loved ones walking toward you. Maybe it’s like no time has passed at all.

And this reminds me that I should be living my life in the light of what is eternal. My time, talent, and treasure needs to be invested in what is eternal. What would that be: relationship with God and relationship with others. If I miss out on this…I miss out on what is eternally important.

This is hard because there are so many distractions. There is so much that competes for my resources. There are so much hurt that I carry. I need to take more time to be quiet in his presence so that he set my thinking and priorities straight and he can heal me. I need to put this world in prespective…I need to think of the “long tomorrow.”

As A.W. Tozer writes:
“Even if the world should continue a million years not one of us could stay to enjoy it. We do well to think of the long tomorrow.”

I want to keep the “long tomorrow” in my sights. I want eternity to be my measure.

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