From the Pastor's Study
From the Pastor’s Study
Living Eternally
Jan 26, 2022
Today we are going to have a little math lesson, one that you probably already know. If you take three numbers, let’s say, 7, 6, and 11, we can find the average. To do that, we add the three numbers together, arriving at 24, and then we divide by the number of numbers (3), and we get 8, the average of those three numbers.
In Canada, someone has calculated our life expectancy. Someone has taken the age of everyone at the time of their death, added them all together and then divided by the number of people in the list. The average life expectancy in Canada, it turns out, is 81.9 years. We are ranked 19th in the world, so if you want to live longer, you will have to move to Hong Kong, first in the world, where the life expectancy is 85.16 years. Of course, this number is just an average, so lots of people will live longer than that average while just about as many won’t make it to that number.
I didn’t do much searching on the Internet for more numbers, but I suspect that life expectancy figures can be broken down for men and women, Asians and Europeans, fat people and thin people, and the like. What we eat, if we smoke, where we live, genetics – all of these things play a role in life expectancy.
What about religion? Does religion change the figures? Does it matter if we are Muslim or Christian or Buddhist? Does our faith determine how long we live?
Again, we need to turn back to math. The numeric symbol for infinity is ∞. If we add ∞+∞+∞ and divide by 3, finding the average, what do we have? We still have ∞. Infinity has no end, and even if you divide it in half, you end up with ∞. (Don’t think about it too hard because no one can really comprehend what this means.)
Now, let’s consider the life expectancy of a Christian. According to the Bible, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, we live for eternity. In the song, Amazing Grace, we sing the words, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun.” John Newton, who wrote this song, gives us a glimpse of what living eternally is like. Ten thousand years is just the beginning, the first moments of eternal life. If we were to count the years of eternal life, we would arrive at ∞, which is a number without end.
As Christians, because of Jesus Christ, our lives last for an infinite number of years. If you average ∞, you come up with infinity. And that makes the statistics I find on the Internet incorrect. Yes, Statistics Canada may have come up with 81.9 years as being our life expectancy, but that is not really how long expect to live. We may not spend those years here on this earth, but that doesn’t mean we don’t live them. If we put our faith in Jesus Christ, we live forever.
In the past month or so, three members of our congregation have gone to be with the Lord. The average time they spent on this earth was around 77 years, give or take a few months. That, on average, is below the Canadian average, although one beat the average by about 15 years. But, no matter how we think about it, an average of 77 years doesn’t seem that long. Life on this earth always ends too soon.
All that being said, we also know that each of these beloved members of our Christian fellowship still lives, now in the presence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. They have just arrived in heaven, and there are some there who have been there for millennia. But the ones who have been there for years have just as much time ahead of them as those who just arrived. And, for all of them, it’s just the very beginning, and there will be no end.
Math breaks down when we think about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. A mathematician would say that it is foolish to think about finding the average of ∞ because we can’t do it. Statistics break down for the believer as well. We nod and smile when someone tells us that we can expect to live, on average for 81.9 years because we know that it isn’t true. When we are found in Jesus Christ, we live forever.
And the life we have now? Whether it be 59 years or 74 years or 96 years, that number of years is just a brief flash compared to what God has in store for us. Yes, we ought to use our years well, serving the Lord, but let us be assured that what we have here is so small, so incomplete to what is in store for us. Life on this earth is never long enough. We can never say that about life with God.
Pastor Gary
