whatever you do.

Eternal life. Where is it? When is it? For a long time I have thought about eternal life as a life after all my birthdays have run out. For most of my years I have spoken about the eternal life as the ‘afterlife,’ as ‘life after death.’ But the older I become, the less interest my ‘afterlife’ holds for me. Worrying not only about tomorrow, next year, and the next decade, but even about the next life seems a false preoccupation. Wondering how things will be for me after I die seems, for the most part, a distraction. When my clear goal is the eternal life, that life must be reachable right now, where I am, because eternal life is life in and with God, and God is where I am here and now.

– Henri Nouwen

This to me is one of the basic differences between the Jewish way (life with God here and now) and the Platonic/Greek way (life with God after you escape this world).

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

Luke 10:25-28

What is blocking you from tasting life with God now?

Tags: heaven, eternal, nouwen

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Christianity, Jesus, Kingdom, Religion, Spirituality, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.