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One of the saddest aspects of our life at the end of the 20th Century and at the beginning of the 21st, is that people don't believe that our lives have a goal. People are trained to think that this life is pointless. We are born by some natural accident. Blame the genes.We grow up to reproduce ourselves. The genes again, and then we grow old and die. "You only live once, so if you're going to make your mark, do it while you can.This is the only chance you get, and when your brain cells die, you cease to exist."
That's it - for you and me, and for the entire human race.The best we can hope for is to prolong our days beyond the "three score years and ten" and find ways of keeping up the quality of life which was natural to us when we were younger. If this entire show is a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" then we are bound to live lives without purpose, without meaning, with no goal. We would have to agree with George Bernard Shaw, who said "If there is life on other planets, they must be using this one as a lunatic asylum".
Supposing however that this 'vale of tears' is the training ground and preparation for what we were originally designed for. Supposing that the glory of music and beauty and form and colour and grace all too infrequently touched by the great composers and artists and glimpsed occasionally in nature are the real world for which we were made, and the way to appreciate them and enjoy them, is by the shedding of our blindness, our deafness and our insensitivity. Supposing Jesus is right and all the rest are wrong. Suppose it, and trust it, and live it, and see what it does for you today. Writing about the 20th Century Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote:
"But men do not live by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them seldom predictable, at times incompatible ..."
For Christians there is one goal and it's not at all like this world. In fact it's not so much a place, as a person: hence 'Journey's end in lovers meeting.'
Jesus speaking:
"You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." Matthew 22:29-30
As the poet said: "Man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
A Prayer:
Thank you Father that this world is not self-explanatory.
Thank you that nothing this world provides, fully satisfies, and thank you for the person and dimension of Jesus.
Now read Matthew 22:23-33.
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