From the perspective of Eternity!

As I am getting ready to leave for Secunderabad, a twin city of Hyderabad, now in Telengana State in India, to do my 4th Module out of six modules of the course in Advanced Counseling, I was munching in my mind about some one, whom I had been counseling. That person (gender, name, place - all confidential!) was at the verge of collapsing back to the depressed state that once had bogged down that person. I was trying to pep up and bring that person to the rational thinking level so that that person would be out of that dangerous state of sliding back into depression. 

During the course in counseling, I read Selwyn Hughes' book, "A Friend in Need: How to help people through their problems," which narrows down the essential personal needs of human beings to basic three needs of 'security, significance and self-esteem.' These needs deal with the need to belong, the need to achieve, and need for self-worth, respectively. He ends the book showing that in this transient world, all these three important and core needs of a human being could only be found in God. Searching for these in the wrong places, namely the spouse or children or parents or friends or work or social relationships, are the root cause of almost all of our problems in life. Larry Crabb, in his book, "Effective Biblical Counseling," brings down the important personal needs to two, security and significance, both of which when available, would go on to make a perfectly and well adjusted person, for his self-worth would have been completely satisfied. He also takes pains to explain that this is possible only in God, our Creator and His Son, Jesus Christ, who came to earth to die in our place so that we could live. 

Recently J. Warner Wallace had written that if we compare our stay on the earth with eternity, our lives on earth is such a small fraction of the whole, that our pains are not really so significant as we think. If eternity is for ever, and our life-span on earth is at the most only 100 years, then it is not much from the perspective of eternity. So what are we really grumbling about? Our sorrows and pains, struggles and disappointments, heart aches and many times joy also, these appear huge to us because we are so close to the happenings. Imagine that all our sorrows end in hundred years, and after that we live in eternity without any pain what so ever, then will our sorrows really count much? It won't. 

Of course to inherit that blissful eternal life, the only way is Jesus Christ, because he says so as recorded in the Bible, at John 14:6, 

'Jesus said to him, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,

No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Jesus Christ comes to reside in us as our Counselor and Comforter, guiding our every step, so that we do not make a false move. When we trust in Him, He becomes our security and He gives us our significance, not just here in our limited life on earth, but also for eternity. 

I am reminded of this beautiful Psalm, 30, verse 5b, 

                 "Weeping may endure for a night,

                 But joy comes in the morning."

Yes, our lives on this earth with all its troubles and trails is only a night, for morning comes like the dawn, bring with it joy, that of eternal life and living in the very presence of God and Christ for eternity. 

We can face any tribulation in this life of ours on earth, with the perspective of eternity. 

Bye friends.