Tag: heaven

A Change in Perspective

~ Barbara ~ 1 Comment

I read these words by Charles Spurgeon and couldn’t resist sharing them:

Life is longing, sighing, crying, wasting away, and desiring.

Heaven is enjoying, possessing, and delighting one’s self in God.

Life is failure, disappointment, and regret.

These emotions are over when death comes,  

For glory dawns with satisfaction and intense contentment.*

Much of our thought life is consumed with the present and its problems. Our emotions long for something better, but our eyes watch the surrounding turmoil and see life wasting away. Disappointments mount and regrets haunt. There’s a better way to live, better thoughts to entertain.

What if we didn’t focus on the next week or next year, but on our eternal future? What if our minds rehearsed Jesus’ promise of a perfect tomorrow, and we began to assimilate that truth into our hearts?

Our perspective will change, and we’ll see joy increase, hope blossom, and anticipation grow. Glory will dawn “with satisfaction and intense contentment.”

My peace swells, and the world seems brighter when I read those words!

*Charles H. Spurgeon, Beside Still Waters, p 222.

Ascension Day: Moving Up

~ Barbara ~ Leave a comment

Have you done your Ascension Day shopping? Bought a new outfit? Purchased gifts or planned a special dinner? Me either. But when I grasped the door handle of a restaurant in Lancaster last week I stilled, surprised and pleased to see the day being honored.

 In all my many years, I can’t recall seeing a sign announcing Ascension Day, let alone closing a business to celebrate it. I do remember going to church as a child but, sadly, today it is seldom mentioned, let alone honored.

We celebrate Christmas and Easter for their life-changing significance but, Ascension Day? We let it slip by even though it points to the most profound, life-changing event we will ever experience.

On that day in history, Jesus’ ascension fulfilled prophesy, but it  also pointed to the future. Those watching Jesus ascend heard these words of promise in Acts 1:

“This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven,
will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”

The Messiah was born. The Messiah was crucified. The Messiah will come back—the same way He left, on the clouds. Ascension Day commemorates Jesus’ return to His Father and His rightful place on His throne, but it is more than that it. Ascension Day celebrates the promise, the assurance, the certainty of His return. It points to our ascension, when we will join Him in the sky and He will bring us home.

The Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God…
We who are still alive… will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
Then we will be with the Lord forever. 

So encourage each other with these words.
I Thessalonians 4:16-18 NLT

Happy Ascension Day!

Graduation: Moving Up

~ Barbara ~ 4 Comments

We just returned from Tennessee for our grandson’s high school graduation. I was surprisingly stirred on several levels.

Graduation, from a school (or a feat of any kind), speaks of leaving the past and moving forward to something more, something better. The satisfaction of accomplishment collides with expectation and hope. I find it all quite emotional, beginning with the processional.

“Pomp and Circumstance” always moves me, and I must not be alone because it’s been played at graduations since 1905. The music is celebratory and triumphant. Like every grandparent in the arena, my eyes sought only one graduate in the processional.

The students’ addresses in Tennessee, 2025, echoed other graduation speeches I’ve heard, sprinkled with teen emotion. When they speak of the challenges they’ve survived, the lows and hard times, I kind of cringe. They have no idea! I don’t downplay the angst of the teen years, but I’m well aware that the hardships they’ll likely face as adults will be far heavier. But I digress, back to the second-best part of the graduation—the tassels!

I love the move of the tassel from the right to the left. I can’t even describe why. I just know it touches me. And then the tossing of the hats—the pure, uninhibited joy of it!

When I reflected on the ceremony and the emotion of it, I thought about the graduation in my future.

  • I thought about triumphant music accompanying Christ’s return.
  • I savored the realization that I was leaving behind all hardship and pain.
  • I imagined moving a metaphorical tassel to indicate absolute separation from my old life and entrance to my new life.
  • I saw hosts of “graduates” throwing down their crowns before the Lord of Lords.

The celebration of any graduation—high school, college, or beyond—is a mild foretaste of the joy that awaits us. (Even as I wrote this post, I couldn’t help smiling.)

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise… to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
I Thessalonians 4:16-18

Image by Gillian Callison from Pixabay

A Heart Set on Pilgrimage

~ Barbara ~ Leave a comment

Pilgrimage is a curious word. When we grasp its concept, it will enrich our perspective and allow us to attune our spirits to what is eternal and put the temporal in its rightful place. Our choice is to live for now, enjoying its pleasures and accepting its challenges, or we travel through life toward an unfathomable destination awaiting us.

In 1678, John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory describing a man named Christian and his journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Christian overcomes many obstacles and resists temptations because he is astutely aware that life is a journey and his destination is real.

When our hearts are set on pilgrimage, like Christian, we look forward to our future with confidence and have strength for the journey to get there.

We find benefits of a pilgrimage perspective in Psalm 84:5-7:

  • Our strength is in God. We are not meandering on earth, stumbling and fumbling, but have supernatural strength to survive and thrive despite obstacles and disappointments.
  • When we meet sorrow, we pass through our valley of weeping—it is not our destination. Rather than camping there, we turn it into a place of life-giving springs!
  • We increase in strength, step by step and day by day, because we press forward to our eternal destiny.
  • We will appear before God. Our tears will be wiped away, our sorrows erased, and our hearts made glad.

 Fellow journeyers, persist and move forward with your hearts set on pilgrimage.