Everlasting Life

“Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’” – Luke 23:43

Jon Tyson in his book “The Burden Is Light”, writes: “On a warm summer night, I drove my son to a local cemetery. It was a Moravian cemetery that sits nestled on a hill overlooking a flowing creek.

My son, a typical teenager in many ways—Xbox, iPhone, hormones, and hungry—lives in the culture of the immediate. We don’t go to cemeteries regularly, but I had a growing desperation in my heart to impart to him a larger sense of the urgency and opportunities of life.
He would be heading off to college soon, and opportunities to indelibly mark his soul were growing increasingly rare. The sun was just setting, and an air of soberness seemed to wash over the place. As we got out of the car, I instructed him to walk around the plots in silence, then share with me what stood out to him.
After some time he came back and we sat on a large rock, overlooking the headstones, taking it all in. “What did you see?” I asked. “Some of these people died really young, younger than me,” he replied. “What else?” “Some husbands and wives were buried next to each other, but one died before the other. I wonder if they got lonely.” “What else?” I asked, pleased at his growing awareness. “Some of them were from the eighteen hundreds, which was an eternity ago. I wonder what life was like for them.”
I wasn’t working toward some sort of Dead Poets Society moment, and I wasn’t trying to get him to understand the fact that, in what seemed like an eternity for him but was a breath of air in light of true eternity, he would be dead. I was working for something simpler yet infinitely more challenging. “The thing you will notice about all these people,” I said, “is that their tombstones contain two dates.

There is the date of their birth, the date of their death, and a tiny dash between them. The whole of your life on earth is going to come down to that tiny little dash.”

Then I pressed in a bit further. “Nate,” I said. “What will your dash be?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’m still trying to figure it out.” After a moment of reflection, he said, “What do you think makes a great dash, Dad?” “That, my son, is the greatest question a person can ask.”

In your short time on earth, let your “dash” be following Jesus.

“It is not darkness you are going to, for God is Light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with you. It is not an unknown country, for Christ is there.” – Charles Kingsley

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:56-57