Eternal Life

FindTruth7 · #1 Aug 19, '09, 5:25 pm

What does Eternal Life mean to Christians? Is it, the hope to reunite with our family and friends, (who of course must become of the same mindset) and dwell with the Lord forever?

"Forever." That is the strange word I am meditating on. Are Christians hoping to dwell beside God and sing His praises forever and ever and ever? I just cannot fathom "Eternal Life," as this. I do not wish death, and if God exists then I would love to see Him and dwell with Him, but forever and ever and ever is a long, long time

and it is difficult to imagine.

4EverHis · #2 Aug 19, '09, 6:14 pm

I agree it's difficult to imagine eternity

but that is what Christianity teaches, that we will literally live for ever and ever. God will never destroy our souls. He made us for Himself.. we will live with Him always. Heaven will be very different than earth....we can't really imagine it. We will be in perfect union with God.

I do look forward to being reunited with family and friends someday, but most of all Heaven for me is being forever with Jesus. I'd also love to meet our Blessed Mother, the Saints, my Guardian Angel, etc.

God bless

Karmartia · #3 Aug 19, '09, 6:19 pm

Forever is an abstraction to us, because we percieve ourselves as finite beings and seek a beginning and and end to things. God has no beginning and no end and so is eternal, a very difficult concept for we puny humans. What I can imagine is spending forever with the woman I love, my wife Deni, because when I am with her time seems to stand still. I imagine it is similiar being in the presence of God, whom I also love. There is no past or future in the presence of God. There is only now.

katrntogo · #4 Aug 19, '09, 7:14 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karmartia

What I can imagine is spending forever with the woman I love, my wife Deni, because when I am with her time seems to stand still.

I hope you get to do so as much as I hope I get to be with my great love (he has already been called home), but I am somewhat confused as there will not be marriage so will we still have a special love or will we love everyone the same? I am interested to know if we will still be partners or not, as several different books on heaven have differing opinions.

Sonny1954 · #5 Aug 20, '09, 11:50 am

This is a good question, and a very important question.

I want very much to believe that eternal life is not a bore. Everybody's speculations about the details of Heaven are different., and none of us knows. We will be with God, whatever that exactly means. As far as I can tell from what I read, in Heaven there is no marriage, no romantic love, no sexual bonding of any kind. I've even read that we might be completely sexless "like the angels."

Further, the first "part" of eternity, we're not even entirely human. We are body-less souls. Spirits or ghosts, if you will. And that will last for who knows who many thousands, millions or billions of earth-equivalent years?

Fortunately, there will be no pain, no sorrow, no failure, no anxiety nor depression. There will probably be comfort and kind paternal caring and the same charitable love for everyone around you. If you enjoy sweet intimacy with your spouse, you'd better enjoy it HERE, because you won't in Heaven.

Epistemes · #6 Aug 20, '09, 12:26 pm

I seem to remember that a "study" was conducted a couple of years ago and it was found that most people thought the idea of Heaven sounded boring while Hell sounded exciting.

I have enough trouble paying attention during Mass -- thus I can't even imagine an eternity of the beatific vision.

Seeker100 · #7 Sep 1, '09, 5:25 pm

Although people aften think of eternal life as what happens after we die I believe that we can have eternal life now. When we believe that Jesus is God and that God is love and commit our lives to promoting love we can serve Jesus in everyone we meet. He can work through us when we love others. In doing this we can have eternal life now.

KyivAndrew · #8 Sep 1, '09, 6:34 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by FindTruth7

"Forever." That is the strange word I am meditating on. Are Christians hoping to dwell beside God and sing His praises forever and ever and ever? I just cannot fathom "Eternal Life," as this. I do not wish death, and if God exists then I would love to see Him and dwell with Him, but forever and ever and ever is a long, long time

and it is difficult to imagine.

I believe to think of Eternal Life as living forever and forever and forever with the same routine is erroneous. IMHO, there is no concept of time in the afterlife, not at least as we understand it. Eternal Life in Heaven is simply more beautiful, luminous, and fascinating and bathed in God's Love than we dare imagine.

Time and space are concepts that pertain to our earthly existence. In the afterlife, we will be outside of those two as we commonly understand them. To live in Heaven will be like living in an ETERNAL NOW, something to which we can only have brief glimpses of in this world as the poet T.S. Eliot described it in contemplating Jesus.

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint --
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning,
....
These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered and reconciled.

It would be nice to "pierce the cloud of unknowing" as one medieval monk described it, but for now we Hope, and dream of an existence beyond our limit of understanding on this earth.

God Bless.