Hope Beyond This Life

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century bc) wrote about

a tribe that, at a birth, began a period of mourning because they antici-

pated the suffering that the infant would face if it lived to adulthood.

However alien to us the ritual might seem, there is some logic to it.

Millennia later, an advertisement in America in the early twentieth

century read “Why live, if you can be buried for ten dollars?”

Life can be hard enough, we know, even if we believe in God and in

the hope of eternity. Imagine, though, how hard it is for those who have

no hope of anything beyond the short and often troubled existence here.

More than one secular writer has commented on the meaninglessness

of human existence, since we all not only die, but we all also live with

the realization that we are going to die. And this realization is what

makes the whole project of human life, which is often hard and sor-

rowful in and of itself, seemingly null and void. One thinker referred

to humans as nothing but “hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating

bones.” Rather macabre, but, again, it’s hard to argue with the logic.

Of course, in contrast to all this, we have the biblical promise of eternal

life in Jesus. And that is the key: we have this hope in Jesus and what

His death and resurrection offer us. Otherwise, what hope do we have?

Read 1 Corinthians 15:12–19. What is Paul saying here about how

closely related Christ’s resurrection is to the hope of our own res-

urrection?

Paul is explicit: our resurrection is inseparably tied to Christ’s resur-

rection. And if we don’t rise, then it means that Christ has not risen, and

if Christ has not risen, then—what? “Your faith is futile; you are still

in your sins!” (1 Cor. 15:17, NKJV). In other words, when we die we

stay dead, and forever, too, and thus, it all is meaningless. Paul says in

1 Corinthians 15:32, “If the dead do not rise, ‘Let us eat and drink, for

tomorrow we die!’ ” (NKJV).

If our present existence as carbon-based protoplasm is all there is,

and our “threescore and ten years” (if we are fortunate; more if we don’t

smoke or eat too many hamburgers) are all that we get—ever—we’re

in pretty tough shape. No wonder Ellen G. White adds, “Heaven is

worth everything to us, and if we lose heaven we lose all.”—Sons and

Daughters of God, p. 349.

Think about how precious our hope and faith is. Why must we do

all that we can, by God’s grace, to preserve it?