#6 Where Am I Heading?
 

To Be or Not To Be
 

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
(Colossians 3:4)
 

    One of the most famous things that Paul ever said challenged me as a teenager. It became so powerful in my thinking that I never got away from it. This is what he said: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.@ Think of that!
    Do you remember when Hamlet said, "To be or not to be, that is the question"? Life was so unbearable for him that he was thinking of ending it, but the thought of ending it was even more unbearable.
    The apostle, I think, could have said the same thing: "To be or not to be, that is the question.@ He would have meant just the opposite of what Hamlet did, however. "If I go on being,@ I can hear him say, "In Christ I have all I need for any eventuality. I've been thrown in prison, beaten up, bitten by snakes, maltreated, stoned. But Christ is my life in all these things. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.@
  Why would dying be a gain? Because he enjoyed Christ down here even with stonings and snake bites. When he died and went to heaven he would enjoy Christ minus stonings and snake bites. The key here or there was that Christ was his life. Other things were incidental.
    There are some people whose lives are governed by stonings and snake bits, and others whose lives are governed by Christ, who is their life. If we belong to the second group, we'll be excited to hear that "when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.@
  The risen Christ, ascended to the Father's right hand, will come in glorious majesty. What a turning point in history that will be!
    Some think history simply lurches from one event to another. They look at events and see no rhyme nor reason to them. They see history as one tragedy or disaster heaped upon another, believe everything is a mess, and wonder what on earth will happen next.
    Others see history as moving in cycles. They say that if we just hang in there, we'll come around the corner eventually.
    Still others see history moving relentlessly toward God's foreordained conclusion.
    What is your approach to history? Mine is that Christ, seated at the Father's right hand, is life, and one day when God says, "Enough is enough,@ Jesus Christ will appear in glory to be hailed as King of kings and Lord of lords. Those who are Christ's will appear with him, glorified, and will share in his glory.
    What do life and death mean to you?


Father, thank you that Christ will always be our life, and because of him, you will be with us through life and through death, Amen.
 

~Stuart Briscoe~