“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”  Psalm 139:7-12

“In reading about ancient Egypt one gets the impression of a culture in which the main business of life was the attempt to secure the well-being of the dead. It looks as if God did not want the chosen people to follow that example. We may ask why. Is it possible for men to be too much concerned with their eternal destiny? In one sense, paradoxical though it sounds, I should reply, yes. For the truth seems to me to be that happiness or misery beyond death, simply in themselves, are not even religious subjects at all. A man who believes in them will of course be prudent to seek the one and avoid the other. But that seems to have no more to do with religion than looking after one’s health or saving money for one’s old age. The only difference here is that the stakes are so very much higher. And this means that, granted a real and steady conviction, the hopes and anxieties aroused are overwhelming but they are not on that account the more religious. They are hopes for oneself, anxieties for oneself. God is not in the center.

For those who love God will desire not only to enjoy Him but ‘to enjoy Him forever’, and will fear to lose Him. It is arguable that the moment ‘Heaven’ ceases to mean union with God and ‘Hell’ to mean separation from Him, the belief in either is superstition; for then we have, on the one hand, a merely ‘compensatory’ belief and, on the other, a nightmare which drives [humanity] into asylums or makes them persecutors. Most of us find that our belief in the future life is strong only when God is in the center of our thoughts…” (“Examining Ideas of Heaven from Other Faiths”, “Reflections on the Psalms”, “Death in the Psalms”, Preparing for Easter, C.S. Lewis)

Having G-d in the center of our thoughts—this is the daily struggle—because we don’t want to worry about damnation, or we choose not to. And so in choosing to ignore Hell, we also decide, consciously or not, to avoid Heaven in our daily thoughts as well. But as the Psalmist suggests, we cannot hide from G-d. There is no where that G-d cannot see us, cannot perceive us, cannot make G-d’s self present to us. And that is true for our thoughts as well. As we turn toward the season of fall, we will notice in the headlights of our lives, the seasons of Advent and Christmas. Before we know it, we will be staring at the Christ child. Perhaps that thought should encourage us to consider Christ in our lives every day.

Pastor Dave