I think I take eternity for granted. Live this life knowing the next will be filled with God’s presence. All the time. Forever. So I let the little things, and sometimes big things, get in the way of that relationship in the here and now. Days are filled with distractions – necessary, but distractions nevertheless.
Work, family, church obligations, the occasional entertainment, and all the tasks that are required to maintain our lives require my time and energy. And I climb into bed exhausted at the end of it all. Prayers are said in the morning and evening…routine, but not consuming. Not relationship.
As a young child, I had a bracelet with the Ten Commandments engraved on it. I recently put it on a chain to wear around my neck. And I read them again, one by one. I always thought I followed the Ten Commandments. When Charlton Heston stood there on the mountain, watching God’s fiery fingers burn them into the stone, I was right there. But this time I couldn’t get past the first two.
I am the Lord your God.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
I am the Lord your God. I am…God almighty. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Nothing more important that God.
But what about my family? I am a wife and mother. I’m supposed to love and protect my family, right? And God created me to have hopes and dreams. It would be wrong for me to ignore them, not to use my gifts to be best of my ability, wouldn’t it?
And yet, somehow in the pursuit of what I think I’m supposed to be doing, this relationship has grown cold. And I’ve become more and more interested in what I want than what God wants. No one, no thing, no distraction, no fear, no desire, nothing is to have a hold on me before God.
I am way overdue for some repentance. I’ve been living my life like it’s just that – my life. I’ve been a hypocrite who talks of loving God but chooses self daily. I act like I’ve got all the time in the world for God down the road. After all, eternity is a long time.
But do I really want to spend eternity with someone I’m not compelled to commune with in the here and now? Someone I think I love but only at arm’s length? Perhaps I’d like to hold off on surrendering everything. Might be too difficult to actually know God. The cost might be more than this selfish woman can handle.
But I know the truth. This relationship, this moment, is what matters. I must begin living as if these brief years on earth are all that I have, my only chance to know the Creator of the universe. When I am consumed with knowing God, the dying to self will not be a challenge that scares me to my core, but rather a natural outpouring of my love for Him. Only then can the reward of eternal relationship actually mean something – everything – to me.