Perfect love awaits us in eternity. Thank God for that!
The other day, I broke my mobile phone. I do not mean that I dropped it and cracked the screen a very little bit and could continue to use it, I mean I totally demolished that phone so that there was only half a screen left and it was completely unusable…
Now for most people, a broken phone is a huge inconvenience but not a catastrophe, but for me a broken phone is the beginning of the end, and it causes me perhaps almost as much anxiety as the coming apocalypse itself!
You see, when I break a phone, it means that I am literally unable to do a single thing for my business and significantly limits all the things I can do for my family at home. I use my phone for messages and online classes and research and texts and emails and follow ups with parents and catch ups with tutors and enquiries from prospective clients. And I also use my phone to access my prayers, to call people socially and in case of emergency (we do not have a land line), to read my books, to watch movies and to go through my shopping list.
Because so much hinges on my mobile phone, I have never enjoyed getting a brand new phone, because there is so much anxiety in relation to the transition of the data on the old phone that it becomes an extremely stressful exercise for me to commit to buying a new phone. The last time I broke a phone – for example – I lost all of the contacts that I had stored in it, which meant that I basically lost all the work of my business, and it took me months to recover most (but never all) of that lost data.
This was a terrible situation to find myself in the last time I broke a phone, and because of this terrible inconvenience, I learned how to store data in a more central and safe manner on my phone so that I could retrieve it slightly more easily if my phone died a sudden death as happened this time.
This time as I sat at my kitchen bench – praying fervently that God would ensure the switch between the old phone and new one went off without a hitch (because I am so terribly technology-illiterate such a thing is only possible through Divine intervention) – I reflected on the great glory of God!
You see that old phone is like my Earthly life… It has a short lifespan (in the scheme of things, when we consider eternity) and it was hanging on by a thread right before it died. The old phone had reached its end date – not because I had been careless of it – quite the contrary, I had been very careful with looking after this particular phone – but batteries wear out and the phone gets slow and finally, I accidentally dropped it and really destroyed the last dregs of life left in it.
When I dropped that phone, nobody was more upset than me, and nobody cried more tears over a stupid old phone than I did when I picked up that broken phone. And this is much the same as nobody is more upset than I am at the evidence of the brevity of this earthly life. Nobody – perhaps except for my Beloved – who never intended that the end of my earthly life would cause me grief.
Now, though I cried many tears that day, I was not silly enough not to recognise that I am very lucky. Although it is a terrible expense, I was able to purchase a new phone the next day and start work on transferring the data from one phone to the other. And for this, I am very fortunate and much more fortunate than most… The new phone that I purchased was new and neat and beautiful. It would work more effectively than my old phone – which had been getting old and tired and playing up anyway for some time now – and it was going to be lovely to use in the long run. And as I sat there waiting for my old tired phone to transfer the data across to my new shiny one, it occurred to me that the new phone is – in a way – like my eternal life.
Obviously, my new phone too will eventually wear out or be destroyed by accident or on purpose, but in some ways, it can represent eternal life. For though I long to hold onto this earthly life, it is the eternal one that I should be craving. For in eternity – if we are saved – life is perfect. We live eternally in a changeless state, never aging or experiencing discomfort, sickness or regret. Instead – if we are saved – our new life will be so much better than our old one that we shall never regret for a moment the life we left behind… In our new life – if we are saved – we shall be in the infinite presence of Almighty God forever, which means we shall be in the presence of PERFECT LOVE forever…
But – as with my transition from one phone to another – there is a certain amount of anxiety related to changing from what is known to what is unknown… Even when what is known is working below the appropriate standards and what is unknown is PERFECTION.
And so, as I look at the new phone in my hand and consider my past anxiety regarding the change to it, it occurs to me that I really am a very silly little child of God. For who – if they have FAITH – could ever worry about love – pure love? And that is all I shall see if I please my Lord… Perfect Love for all eternity!
And what on earth could there be to worry about with something like that?
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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