Eternity: Understanding it: Teaching it: Living it.

Eternity:  Understanding it; Teaching it: Living It!

An entity that all of us have heard about, some delving into its existence and making adherence to its presence.  It becomes an entity that has meaning, depth to its magnificence, and an answer regarding the reality of its existence.

Look at what eternity may be like as a place, an existence, or even what we all may become part of.  We speak of heaven and hell without even describing in human terms what they are or where one can enter their opening after judgment.  Of course, mysteries are a very large portion of the mind of man where the best we can surmise is wonderment, an actual acquiescence to it.

Where did the term come from, or do we describe it as a noun, an adjective regarding the essence of it, or something we may never be able to connect to any description known to man? Whatever we may attach to its relevance, we need to add the question regarding God, before creation was conceived.  

The mystery of God having existed without any beginning and consequently having no ending as well  may in its deepest theological premise keep all of us at arms length away from any human understanding.  Therefore, since God is eternal, so is the eternity he exists in.   However, understanding this reality still leaves us in a mode of believing in eternal reality, but understanding the how and what regarding it will always elude us.  

If we desire to teach about the reality of eternity, we must recall that to understand God is to simply say that God is Love, alone.  Nothing else can be said to find a deeper explanation of our creator. 

So, the most complete mystery of eternity is to attach its understanding to place that alongside God  since both are one entity that always IS.  Again as in previous articles using the pronoun was becomes improper when speaking of God.  Since God had no beginning, there is not a past tense applied to him.

The words of God to Jeremiah as he was being called to prophesy; “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.”  (Jer 1: 5).

As in a previous article I alluded to the fact that our soul already is a deep part of God and within that same emphasis we too have been part of eternity before entering human life.  As with Jeremiah, if God already knew him his part of eternal life would be with him as it is with us.  Yes, we were born into humanity, but our soul was already known in eternal life in heaven. 

Any mystery regarding God and his non-beginning relates exactly to the mystery of eternity and the foreknowledge of our own predicted existence which each one would share at human birth.  We are given the gracious opportunity to live out a quest of reaching back to God through our acceptance of eternal life here on earth.  

Ralph B. Hathaway