half way between here and eternity. . .

so it is 5:36am and the brain won't let me sleep again. who would have guessed it huh?  but this one was a little different than normal.  usually i can't sleep b/c something is overly on my mind.  tonight (or this morning) i just laid there thinking on absolutely nothing.  but since i couldn't sleep, it let my mind wonder, and that led me to picking up a laptop.

my understanding of the eternal is flawed.  i sure hope it is not as naive and cheesey as the picture, but i don't believe it to be accurate.  it must be, otherwise i would strive to live a perfect life here on earth.  i wouldn't make the same mistakes, those seeming moments of rage where i get caught up in the moment where i don't consider the outcomes of my actions.  if my understanding of eternity was complete, i would think it would become a greater portion of my attention here in the conscious temporal world.  

it seems i allow myself to get distracted by the complexities of life, rather than the actual gift of life that i am living.  it is so intricate, so complicated, so natural and yet at the same time super-natural.  of all the world's fastest computers, no one has even come close to getting to the speed of the human processor, the brain.  we are talking millions of important life-altering decisions handled by an organ that for the average portion is usually only 2% of its weight, yet firing off these "calculations" in milliseconds.  it is even to the point where we don't even realize we are making them.  the beats of your heart, breathing on cue, being able to type, even just reading these words and viewing a world through an upside-down lens. but yet of all the things i could list here, life comes down to only one simple truth:

love God.

of all the things that i have or will fill my head with, from stupid statistics of football players to hopefully a greater understanding of the human psyche, it is empty and meaningless without God.  that is my i must focus more on my understanding of the eternal, b/c i believe i was made for more than what i have done here.  

i love quotes, and i love movies, therefore. . . . well, you do the math.  but i just re-watched one of my favs a few weeks ago, and in it there is a quote, "what we do in this life echoes in eternity." that is something i am aware of, but not something i always live for.  i believe this quote to be true, but i also believe it to only be a portion of the eternal gift of life that our Savior has given us.

so wrap it up, i always like to leave something for us to be pledged to, some sort of application that we can take with.  this time, i charge you to live.  not just to survive, but to live.  not just to waste time until the value is found, live, make it valuable now.  not just to make the best of what you got, but to live and give back to others better than you have.  not to just to enjoy it, but to live and take in all that God has made. this requires energy, diligence, risk, fortitude, vulnerability and many other qualities we don't enjoy using on a daily basis, but the outcome will be more than any one of us can imagine.  fulfillment of the greatest kind, knowing that you and the Father of creation can be in the same moment together. although i never may fully come to grips with the concept of eternity, THAT is all i need.

"This truth gives them confidence that they have eternal life, which God—who does not lie—promised them before the world began. And now at just the right time he has revealed this message, which we announce to everyone. It is by the command of God our Savior that I have been entrusted with this work for him." Titus 1:2-3 (NLT)