This can be an easy chapter to gloss over, since it seem so theological and religious and not very practical. The topic, though, is pretty important to the whole goal of this project. Here's some ideas in the chapter that I found to be helpful reminders or insights:
This life is not all there is.
Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to him in eternity.
C.S. Lewis said, "There are two kinds of people: those who say to God 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, "All right then, have it your way.'"
The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears.
To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity continually in your mind and the value of it in your heart.
"For us this is the end of all the stories... But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All of their life in this world... had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever and in which every chapter is better than the one before."
...God offers you an opportunity beyond your lifetime. The Bible says, "[God's] plans endure forever; his purposes last eternally."
You may feel it's morbid to think about death, but actually it's unhealthy to live in denial of death and not consider what is inevitable.
Just as the nine months you spent in your mother's womb were not an end in themselves but preparation for life, so this life is preparation for the next.
From my point of view, describing life on earth as a dress rehearsal for life in eternity is not very helpful, well not to me. Life on earth is very important, and so is life in eternity. Both are crucial to life with God. Life on earth is more than a dress rehearsal. But I get the point being made.
Also, I disagree that if our time on earth is all there is to our life, that we should encourage everyone to start living it up immediately. The Way of Jesus, or even a good and ethical secular life, has much advantage over hedonism and rampant narcism for this life. A party life becomes unsustainable pretty quick. The hope of eternity is beautiful and essential, but it is not the only compulsion we have for being good and loving while alive on earth.
What is heaven like? It's probably fair to reason that Jesus' resurrected body is what our resurrected body will be like. So imagine yourself existing for eternity... kind of scary, isn't it? Except that our resurrected body is "like" the original, recognizable, yet renewed, restored. And our personality, our "essence" is like the original, recognizable, yet renewed, restored. So what will we do for eternity? Probably a lot of what we are doing now, except in a universe void of death and sin. Those two factors profoundly shape life on earth. Imagine if there is no death or sin... it's easy if you try.
What about you? What convicted or inspired you in the reading today?
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