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Thought of the day:

What if Jesus came back now?
Will you be proud of what you’ve done for Him so far?

Read more here.

Before you answer (mentally or verbally)*, take some time to let the question simmer for a while. Fully understand the question, the consequence of question and the consequences of the answer.

Living With A Eternal Perception.

Note: I tend to get oxymoronic replies: “I can’t wait to go heaven, but I don’t wish to die right away.”

This is one of those cheesy emails that actually changed my life trajectory. I believe it calls for a suitable response. I quit my beloved kayaking team and devoted the rest of my time to serve God after reading this. I’ve never looked back since.

You don’t actually have to take the quiz. Just read the email straight through, and you’ll get the point that it is trying to make!

Take this quiz:

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America contest.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

6. Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

Easier?

The lesson:
The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today.
It’s already tomorrow in Australia.
- Charles Schultz

In retrospect, I thought this response was rather insightful, even for myself. I learnt many things along this journey of answer these sets of questions posed by a reader in one of my blog post. I post it in hope that it may be useful to you guys as well.

Soham Das-
Hi! Thank you very much for commenting and reading… First time seeing u around! I’m sorry I took so long coz I wanted to mull over some of the question that you have given so as to give you my best possible answer that I can gather from my (very) limited understanding of God and His works.

1. Why should a man repent?
Well, as Christians look at this from an eternal point of view, the reason to repent would be quite obvious. Let’s not even pull heaven or hell into the picture as of yet. If you were given chance to spend eternity with a person, would you do it with one that is constantly repenting in the course of eternity, or the unrepentant one? For even a saintly man who is unrepentant of the smallest things will slowly deteriorate into a monster when you stretch his existence over the span of eternity.

S
To give you an analogy, I would compare this to a mathematics graph, where we plot this into a time (x-axis) over character (y-axis) graph. Repentance in this case would be the change of gradient, from negative to positive. No matter where you may be plotted along the moral character, from the +1000 of Mother Teresa to the -1000 of Osama Bin Laden, if your gradient is a -2 of unrepentantance, whatever positive value you have would not remain positive for long eventually if you extrapolate the graph along the eternal timeline. On the other hand, even if you are at the infinite depths of the moral graph, even Satan: If he was to repent, even with a pathetic gradient of +0.1, given the eternal time span, he would eventually be restored to the glory of a saintly being. Hence repentance is important, and its reason is obvious, only when you view it in light of eternity.

2. If he has indeed done something wrong, then isn’t he repaid back in kind, due to the fallout of his own actions, right here, right now (I mean here and now as earth and a lifetime), then why is God bent on sending him to damnation?
This one is much simpler. I would say this is the double edged sword of delayed accounting. Then again, delayed accounting has to be here in the first place because of love. Why would you put your 5 year old kid to a drive test when you know he would fail? Love asks of you to wait in such cases. And I believe that is exactly what God is doing.

3. If God created us, and he loves us then would He intend to correct us by showing his power or by making us realize that our actions are paid to us in the same coin.
I believe this is a statement you are making with regards to question 2? Do clarify with me in any way if I misinterpreted your questions. Thanks for taking your time to read!

Been getting quite a number of comments on the 42km marathon and the weird and insane things I’m about to do. Well, I can’t say they have been successfully deterred me from doing the things I wish to do, but it did make me re-reflect why am I doing the things I do.

“I rather fail accomplishing then accomplish failing.”

It is all about having a clear conscience with yourself. In the words of Paul,

“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
[2 Tim 4:6-7]

Those are the words I aspire to say at end of my life. In all I do, I give it my best shot and see what happens. Even if I fail, at least I make the result a certainty instead of a dubious “what if?”

That’s why I run the marathon.
That’s why I try out new hairstyles.
That’s why I serve God with my all.

I do not want to ponder about the extra drops of drink left in the offering cup.
There is a fate worse then hell; it’s regret in heaven.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source

And to think that I thought “mundane” meant boring. What an apt word to describe the life on earth.

Mundane

Life on earth is meant to be mundane! God created it precisely this way in hope that its mundaneity* would spur us on to look for the real deal. Compared to heaven, earth is indeed mundane. Sadly however, when humans do without a thing for a time long enough, they forget the existence of it. They find themselves adapting to its absent and taking it to be the norm.

We take earth to be all there is, comforting ourselves by busying ourselves around a track without a finish line. In a way, we have assimilated ourselves into a perverted edition of “The Sims”. Leading virtual reality-lives and forgetting reality; we led our reality-lives forgetting eternity. As entertaining as earth was created to be, when placed in comparision with heaven, there can be no word more apt to describle but “mundane”.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”
-C. S. Lewis: Christian Behavior

*Imaginary word