This is an entry in the “Acrostic Contemplations.”
Immortality is a long time. At some point in our lives, we all think about death, the end of this life, which is all we have known and, therefore, all we can comprehend. Death, we know because we have seen it, is the end of living, the cessation of being, or at least of this being.
While recognizing the sorrow of those left behind, John O’Donohue points out, “…for the one dying, how lonely it must be to lose the world. This is the first time that it is about to happen.” The first time and presumably the last and only time.
Books, plays, TV shows, and movies have all explored how eternal life, at least here on earth, might play out. I cannot think of any such work that shows it as something to be desired, yet immortality is the promise of Scripture and Christianity.
“How do we achieve eternal life” seemed to be the question on everyone’s lips, according to the Gospels. Jesus is asked this question in each of the canonical Gospels and it is the reward for the faithful affirmed in Daniel 12 and 2 Maccabees. John has perhaps the most famous formulation, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Daniel and Maccabees come from times of great persecution and conflict and Jesus’ own day was hardly one of peace and contentment. The yearning for everlasting life was certainly not immortality in this world. Rather it was the hope and expectation of the perfect world to come, עולם הבא (olam ha-bah). This desire emerges from the innate knowledge that this world is not as it should be, and we are not all that we were made to be.
The resurrection of the dead to eternal life, the re-creation of earth and heaven, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God are the hope and conviction of the Christian faith. Not just because we need such hope in a world of sorrow and suffering, but because it is true.
And we do need such hope. It is this hope which tells us this is not the end, this is not all there is. It is this hope that enables us to continue to live in a world of lies and deceit, grief and suffering, affliction and injustice. It is this hope which moves us to love and serve Christ as he first loved and served us.
“Therefore,” says Paul, “be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Cor 15:58)
