Forever in The Balance

Posted on by Makala Doulos

The truth about forever is that it is happening right now.
~ Sarah Dessen

When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify You, since You have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Me in your own presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed.
~ John 17

Oh beloved, it is true. We are in a pitched battle against the time that is running out in each of our earthly lives. Everything presses against us. And nearly everything we do and think and say matters forever. And yet, it seems that only the very few things that don’t really matter, are really the only things to which anyone wants to pay any attention.

The problem is not new. Wave upon wave of empires, among whom are the Hittites, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Mayans, Incas, and now the Euro/American West are finding that any society will fall into fatal complacency upon phasing from accomplishment to laziness in the false prosperity a society finds in abundant material goods.

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” And He said, “Go, and say to this people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And He said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The Holy Seed is its stump.
~ the call of the oracle Isaiah in Isaiah 6

And even in our falling we do not lose responsibility to scream the call that a fall is in progress. That a people are asleep is all the more reason to yell fire when that sleeping person is in a house that is aflame. Even if that person will not listen. Even if they turn over and burn, we must tell them and help them if we can.

Our flesh screams for more pleasure
Our political systems create victims
Our political views enrage the same
Our hunger for more deprives those in need
Our desires morph into ravenous lust

Our focus is torn away from even the important, to be focused only on the immediate. We want and hate and titillate and pleasure ourselves with ever-increasing focus away from anything that means anything. We are devolving into facsimiles of the demons which stoke our desires.

Want. Lust. Rage. More. Give. ME. MORE.

And in our selfish little hurricanes of hate and lust, we become the very minions of the minions of hell. The freedom and convenience we thought we would find in our indulgence has turned sour in the stomach of our souls. We are not happy.  What happened?

“WHY AM I NOT HAPPY?!? I got everything I wanted.”

And in supplying this truth, we find the deeper truth: that we have been deceived by one whose end is inevitable. And while the The True Bright and Morning Star wants to make us His very bride, this angel of light would only make us his whore – to be cast into the same pit of flames, he himself will inhabit forever.

But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. Those who see you will stare at you
and ponder over you: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?’ All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb; but you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch, clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a dead body trampled underfoot. You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have slain your people.
~ the realization of the failure of the Evil one in Isaiah 14

Wake up child. Time for us to understand something. Anything that exists only in time, does not, can not, and will not satisfy. You, beloved child of the Maker of The Universe(s), has planted eternity firmly within the deepest part of your heart. You will live forever. And this is not a mystery. For we all already know this. We just try to ignore it.

However, the direction of our forever is very much in the balance. And this is why the liar always tries to stack as much fluff on the scales as possible. For he knows that one single Truth far outweighs anything he could ever come up with to get us to see things his way.

Love.

Love is the glorious, over-pressuring wave of the very Person of G_d. Love is His Infinite Triune Self both pressing into us, and pulling us towards Himself in an embrace which (if we simply yield to it) will hold us forever.

Can we see it? The liar knows this. He also knows that nothing he can throw against the infinite Love of G_d will ever compete against it. So, in his soon-to-be vain attempts to deceive us, he tries to get us to think that G_d (and everything that flows from the knowledge of Him) is useless – and that only the things we can see right now are important. For, if he can get us to do this, we might just ignore the eternity we are already in, until it is too late.

Awake beloved. Are you sleeping in the fires of the end of this age? Awake, and look away from the foul and false fluff the evil one is waving in front of your eyes of flesh. Look instead at the One who inhabits deep eternity, and has already put the same in your heart. If you look, really look, you will finally see Him for the Truth He has always been.

Tonight is your night beloved. Time to see eternity. Time to know Him.

To believe in God is to believe in someone who will always be far beyond us, who will forever be presenting a new aspect of himself to us.
~Louis Evely (1910- )

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