You, and I, are immortal. We will never cease to exist.
This present moment, in which you’re reading this, is but one of an endless succession of moments. And yes, a moment is coming for all of us – our death – but death is itself a moment in that succession, to be followed by an unending stream of other moments. Death is not the end for us, but rather a transition from one state into another.
This is the message of the Gospel of Jesus, that we are created by God, and maintained by God, and will be forever. And the dynamic of this permanent relationship with God is quite simply His unconditional love. Such a love we can barely comprehend, but one way of understanding it is that there is nothing you or I can do to stop God loving us. Nothing. He will never go back on His decision to give us life. You and I are immortal and there is nothing we can do, even if we wanted to, to terminate that immortality.
The key question is actually: what will be the nature of this unending existence? Eternal life with God, or… eternal desolation and meaninglessness without Him? And that’s our choice here and now, for He will never force Himself on us. So it’s not whether we will cease to exist but rather the quality of that limitless span. I repeat, you and I are immortal.
I cannot prove this. It requires to be accepted on faith. But there are strong pointers as to why this should be our destiny. If we stop to ponder and discern what is at the core of our being we should discover that there are two fundamental needs – and these two needs are common to all humanity, because what is most core to our being is also most universal. These two needs are:
~ to be as happy / fulfilled as it’s possible to be;
~ to be that happy for as long as possible.
Who among us would settle for only partial happiness? And who would settle for a limited period of happiness? Would you?
That profound inner truth, common to all people, that our sole fulfilment is unending joy, can only ever be fully met by a loving God. No human agency can ever do this for us. OK, you may say, faith is then the pathetic projection of our deepest wishes, never to be fulfilled – a nostrum for the weak-willed. The ultimate ‘pie in the sky’. I cannot prove otherwise, but neither can anyone discount the possibility that we might actually be created for the fulfilment of those needs placed there by a loving Creator. Faith in God is then not irrational but rather supra-rational.
The Gospel of Jesus is truly good news, the best news, ever. Understood properly, Jesus’ message of radical love resonates with our deepest nature. And moreover, it means that eternity is now: this present moment is itself part of that endless stream of moments.
God is with you today, singing His love song in your inner core,
Martin