Time is said to march on relentlessly and we are pushed further into the future, whether we like it or not. Each year brings us closer to our own end, our own death. Nevertheless this is not the kind of thought one prefers, especially at the beginning of a new year. We are given alternatives—parties to celebrate the end of a year and the birth of a new one—to hide our own deep anxieties. The flow of time reminds us of the finitude of our lives with a loud voice, but we often try to drown it out with other noises.

Our problem is that we are aware of two realities. First, we are reminded of our limited lifespans. As the Bible reminds us, “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures” (Psalm 90:10). Second, we are also aware of eternity, for God has set eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Our spirits can see eternity, but we are also anxiously aware that our bodies have expiry dates. It is like having a deep hunger but knowing that the puny bread on the table is hardly sufficient to satisfy that hunger. This is our human dilemma.

Any talk of a future must take this dilemma seriously. The world offers different pictures of a future, often a bright one. We are offered better-looking bodies, more efficient machines, bigger houses, more money, and so on. Offering a bright personal future is now the key to selling all kinds of things in the marketplace. We try therefore to secure a good future by working hard, fighting hard, and buying much. But it is like making much of a movie that will be shown to a dying man. He is supposed to get excited and wait eagerly for the movie. But after that, what?

Sigmund Freud, in his book The Future of an Illusion, condemned religion as an illusion without a future. However, I think that the problem is not with our Christian faith, but with the kinds of future offered by the world. The problem is in fact the illusion of a future created by a world which has trivialised the future. People live on this illusion of a future and that is a tragedy. If we in the church are not grounded in biblical truth, we too may be tempted to embrace these false versions of the future, and there are signs that this is already taking place in many sections of the church. Our task, in fact, is to offer a future without illusion.

That kind of future takes death and human finitude seriously. “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). Such faith knows that the future is not created by human hands but by divine grace. Our future is in God’s hands. The next time we travel in life’s highways and shop in the world’s marketplace and sit in our committee meetings, we must ask ourselves what sort of future we believe in, and are living for. We must keep our eyes steadily on the distant horizons of eternity, and the future God has promised so that we can sail the rough seas of time without being unnecessarily frightened by the changing fortunes of our lives, and without being seduced by false and trivialised futures offered by a passing world.

The Lord’s parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) is a reminder that living and dying for an illusory future is a great tragedy. We should wisely “number our days” (Psalm 90:12) and, like Paul (Romans 8:18–25), keep our eyes on the real future which the Lord of history and eternity offers.

Consider this:

What trivialised futures does the world offer? In what concrete ways do you keep in mind the true future that Christ offers in order to live faithfully in the present?

Excerpted and adapted from Fire for the Journey: Reflections for a God-Guided Life by Robert M. Solomon. ©2002 by Robert M. Solomon. Used by permission of Armour Publishing. All rights reserved.

Related Resources:

Cultivating a Heart of Contentment. Finding contentment in life can be difficult, especially when society paints a picture of materialism and covetousness. Learn how to develop a lifestyle based upon kingdom principles. Find out how you can cultivate a heart of contentment where the compass of your soul points toward eternal gain rather than temporary pleasures. Find out more here.

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