Nobody could contemplate an eternity of futility. Yet this is what some worshippers seem to offer their neighbours as the crowning gift from God, the many mansions that Jesus spoke of, a replacement of what might have followed the death of death and the victory over the grave.
Christianity would not be Christianity if it failed to acknowledge life’s duties. We earthly creatures have earthly responsibilities and nobody would wish it otherwise. But it is possible so to emphasise those duties when we think of this life as the test-bed for our personalities that there is nothing left to be done in whatever life may follow. A secular view of life beyond this one might be a matter of colonising a worn-out planetary neighbour. That would make sense – of a sort. But that is hardly part of the Christian Gospel.
Here is a failure of the imagination. It is a failure on our part to allow for a Creator to think of many dimensions beyond the three or four that we can cope with. It is also, dare we say it, a failure by those inspired by the biblical writers to give us something to get our teeth into. Harpists and new songs (Revelation 14) may inspire some but other tastes may seem to be neglected. The trade and merchandise of Babylon will be no more and the victor’s heritage will be water from the spring of life.
That is how it might be put. But our imagination has more to work on than that. We are creatures of a God of imagination, a God who creates what is new, pressed down and running over. We simply could not follow the imaginings of such a God but we see a partial picture in the biblical documents. The Father welcomes home the repentant son. He for his part expects no more than he knew as a boy. But his expectations are not equal to the task of enjoying what the Father has for him. His bliss is unstated but implied.
‘I SAW ETERNITY’
‘I saw Eternity the other night/Like a great ring of pure and endless light…’ (Henry Vaughan,622-1695)
He also wrote the lines: ‘They are all gone into the world of light/And I alone sit lingering here.’
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