Change is only in this lifetime. In the next one we will be live eternally in the place where we are and there will be no moving out or moving in or moving at all.
Recently, the youngest child in my family got married. He had lived at home until his wedding and when he finally moved out of home to live with his new wife in their own home, it was the first time in over forty-one years that my parents had lived together without a child between them. It was the first time they were truly child-free.
Now, of course, as anyone from a large family knows, grandparents are never really child-free. Grandchildren keep them busy, and their own children are usually popping in and out of their homes as they need or want one thing or another. But it was still a very different experience for my parents.
You see, while the wedding seemed like the beginning of the next chapter, the old chapter did not really feel finally closed until my youngest sibling came back home and moved the remaining things out of my parents’ home and into his new home, some weeks after the wedding.
And I have been thinking about the finality of that time and that moment and the feeling that my parents must have had in knowing that the age of child-rearing truly was behind them…
Because everything in this world seems temporary. It seems that anything can be adjusted or negotiated or changed. And yet, in the next life – the ETERNAL one – nothing is changed or changeable. Instead, we will spend eternity in a single state. And, the part that has caught my attention today is that we will be spending that eternal state in eternity.
You see, this world is so deceptive. We spend so much of our time thinking that we can weasel our way out of things. Things are certain until a certain point. We are sure until something changes. We know the facts until another opinion or result changes things forever.
In the Middle Ages, Copernicus was persecuted for arguing – based on scientific evidence – that the Earth was in fact not flat, but round and that in that spherical shape, the Earth would rotate around the Sun. And so – something which was previously considered to be fact, was in fact not a fact at all, and was as impermanent as the world in which it was made.
And I have been thinking about that today. Because it seems to me that I spend an awful lot of my life on things of this world that will come to pass, when the eternal things are just sitting there – waiting for me – and I do not even have the wisdom to focus on that. After all, change is only in this lifetime. In the next one we will be live eternally in the place where we are and there will be no moving out or moving in or moving at all.
And it occurs to me today, that I have much to do in preparation of that…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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