One thing that sets Christian believers apart from their unbelieving neighbors is an eternal perspective. Believers often talk about about prayers they have prayed. They love to tell stories about how God has helped them in living life.
The Eternal
Right-thinking Christians try to relate everything to their relationship with, their dependency on and their accountability to God. He is real to them.
This way of thinking assumes that God is a loving Father who is interested in our political opinions, our family lives, our use of money, our daily work, our service to others in this world, and a host of other concerns. Proverbs 3:6 says, “in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.”
A prayer I found in The Valley of Vision expressed this well. “Teach me the art of attending to things temporal with a mind intent on things eternal.”
The Earthly
Colossians chapter 3 illustrates this. Paul’s teaching there encompasses such themes as marriage and child-rearing, corporate worship. social justice, ethics and morality, and daily work. Practical realities of life on earth. The Christian attitude toward all these earthly priorities is to infuse them with an eternal perspective.
Thus, the discussion about life on earth begins with this preamble: “Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3).
The earthly and the eternal. How well we integrate them may determine how real God is to us as we live our every day lives.
