When a tourist agency wants to motivate you to shell out a couple thousand of your hard-earned dollars and take a trip to some distant place, they usually show you pictures of sandy beaches, transparent waters brimming with exotic marine life, clear skies and cottony clouds, and cool breezes. They want you to meditate on it, to think about it, consider it, so you'll be dissatisfied with where you are, and decide that it will be worth every cent you spend, and book a flight to the Bahamas! Unless we're convinced of the sheer delight and ultimate good of life in the unalloyed, intense, full presence of God, we'll have little or no motivation to seek that place, much less hold loosely the pleasures that we find in this life. God wants us to live our lives motivated by the life to come, spending every bit of our life's energy and resources in our journey toward his presence, our ultimate home. |
