08/23/14 IT IS ONLY A MOMENT

08/23/14 IT IS ONLY A MOMENT

I spent some time at the hospital (several hours in the ER) with a friend recently. It was a very busy couple of days (according to the staff). It was heart breaking to watch patients come and go. Some brought in their little children, and you could hear them crying in pain, and sometimes in distress. So disturbing. Sometimes you could tell that the doctors and nurses could not do any more to help the patients. As I passed through the hallway, I could hear older people crying out, asking for help. When I passed by some people in the hallway, I could hear muffled conversation as the person fought back tears. It seems like an eternity when you are suffering, but for those who are in a right relationship with Christ, it is but a moment of misery, leading to a wonderful forever.

IT IS FOREVER.
I thought about the numbers of people who are living in this vale of sorrows, vainly hoping for relief in the world to come. You see, without a saving faith in Christ, there is no real hope. Without Christ there will be a forever, but it will be a forever without Christ. Sin is an insurmountable problem for all people; BUT NOT FOR CHRIST. Being changed into the person that God wants us to be requires nothing from us but faith and surrender. Yet people who are given the opportunity to have a fresh start in life usually choose to live by their own standards and are willing to lose all that God has to offer, as they grasp in futility for the passing pleasures of this transient imitation of life.

2 Corinthians 5:1-10
New Living Translation (NLT)
New Bodies
1 For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.

2 We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.

3 For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies.

4 While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.

5 God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.
6 So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord.

7 For we live by believing and not by seeing.

8 Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.

9 So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him.

10 For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.