Spending my time wisely

As I look up from my desk, I see a lovely small carriage clock on my window sill. It was a gift from a very old lady I had befriended and come to love very much. She knew I liked the clock because I had often told her how much I liked it. “You can have it when I die” she said, “When my time has run out”. And so it was.

         I don’t yet know when, but my time will also run out. I can avoid the very thought of it or plan for it. That planning can involve simple decisions like who will receive my lovely clock and even the content of my funeral. But the most important choice is to decide now whether, after my death, I will spend eternity with God or not.

      There is a common misconception that God decides whether we have eternal life or not. In a very real sense, we make that choice by the way we live this life. If we choose to live our life for God, then God will honour that choice when we die and we remain in his presence for ever. By contrast, if we choose to live our lives as though God did not exist, or as though he was only there for a proportion of our time on earth, then he is justified in assuming that if we did not want him on earth, why should we want Him thereafter?

      In practice, that ‘living for God’ entails living a ‘life like God’, like Jesus. So living for God will always involve sacrificial love. In return, we receive the love, joy and peace that God gives to those who serve him, and eternal life after we die. Jesus summarised this idea in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said, “Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and you will receive everything else” (Matthew 6:33).