This Life is Not All There is

This life is not all there is.
Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death – in eternity – than you will here. Earth is the staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your life in eternity. It is the practice workout before the actual game; the warm-up lap before the race begins. This life is preparation for the next.

At most, you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in eternity. Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Browne said, “but a small parenthesis in eternity.” You were made to last forever.

If your time on earth were all there is to your life, I would suggest you start living it up immediately. You could forget being good and ethical, and you wouldn’t have to worry about any consequences of your actions. You could indulge yourself in total self-centeredness because your actions would have no long-term repercussions. But – and this makes all the difference – death is not the end of you! Death is not your termination, but your transition into eternity, so there are eternal consequences to everything you do on earth. Every act of our lives strikes some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

What is it going to be like in eternity with God? Frankly, the capacity of our brains cannot handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. It would be like trying to describe the Internet to an ant. It’s futile. Words have not been invented that could possibly convey the experience of eternity. The Holy Books says, “No mere man has ever seen, heard or even imagined what wonderful things God has ready for those who love the Lord.”[]

(Rick Warren)

The Best Investment

Many people are driven by materialism. Their desire to acquire becomes the whole goal of their lives. This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.

It’s also a myth that if I get more, I will be more important. Self-worth and net worth are not the same. Your value is not determined by your valuables, and God says the most valuable things in life are not things!

The most common myth about money is that having more will make me more secure. It won’t. Wealth can be lost instantly through a variety of uncontrollable factors. Real security can only be found in that which can never be taken from you – your relationship with God.[]

(Rick Warren)

40

The Holy Book is clear that God considers 40 days a spiritually significant time period. Whenever God wanted to prepare someone for his purposes, he took 40 days. In addition to that, the number forty also plays a significant mark in human's life:

• Reading all content of Al Qur’an in 40 days is highly recommended by Prophet
Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) (Hadith Tirmidzi)
• Rasulullah PBUH received his prophethood at the age of 40
• Noah’s life was transformed by 40 days of rain.
• Moses was transformed by 40 days on Mount Sinai.
• David was transformed by Goliath’s 40-day challenge.
• Elijah was transformed when God gave him 40 days of strength from a single meal.
• Prophet Yunus was in a whales mouth for 40 days.
• Prophet Muhammad PBUH said, “In every one of you, all components of your creation
are gathered together in your mothers womb by 40 days” (Narrated in Saheeh Muslim)
• The average “Nifas” period (blood that is discharged due to childbirth) is 40 days.
• In the book of Numbers, the Israelites are shown to have first searched the
promised land (Canaan) for a duration of 40 days
• Primal Christians can also be recited to have held special regard for a time span
of 40 days. According to the synoptic Gospels, Jesus fasted and was "there in the
wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan... "
• Human body comprises around 40 trillion cells.
• Human red blood cell average life span is 40 days.

and offcourse, wise old saying said that "life begins at 40"[]

It Takes Courage

“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”

~ Seneca quotes (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD)

The long arduous journey to God is indeed filled with ups and downs. It's been assembled that way, paradise is very high, and ascending to lofty places takes a great deal of effort. The way to Paradise is filled with things that go against human wishes and inclinations. This needs strong determination and willpower. In a hadith narrated by Bukhari and Muslim from Abu Hurayrah, the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said: "Hell has been veiled with desires, and Paradise has been veiled with hardships."

Even the prophets prayed to God and asked "Where are you God?" when they are in their deepest sorrow. But, if we take a look at them closer, their attitude revealed a firm and unshaken faith. In an abyss of difficulty they called to The Lord, the only One who is able to safe them. And that, what makes them survive.

How many times in our life have we called upon our Lord when we are facing difficulties, instead of whining to people and complain how miserable life we have?
And do we realize that by doing the later we are actually mocking God by expressing how terrible is His scenario in our life?

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:9)

Next time we face difficulty in life, just ask God for courage. He knows that we often feel inadequate just to handle the problems of everyday life. He knows that we need to be brave to stand up for ourself. It is never the problem that makes us sorrow, but the lack of trust and hope towards God.[]

Seeking God's Approval

"It is better to have God's approval, than the world's applause:
there is a time shortly coming when a smile from God's face will
be infinitely better than all the applause of men: how sweet will
that word be, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.'
(Matt. 25: 21)."

- Thomas Watson

The Invisible Thread

Despite deep fears of terrorism, economic or environmental threats, the anxiety that is present in our culture does not come from any outside force. The real problems we are facing are not political, sociological, or even ecological. Rather we are recognizing that something in our foundation no longer holds. This is the deep reason for our collective unease that we projectonto outer forces which appear to threaten us.

It is time to look closely at what is really happening. The mystic has always known that in order to find the cause of any effect we have to turn our attention inward, to look at the inner patterns. We look to the hints in our dreams, we read the images of our psyche that are not censored by our conscious conditioning. When Joseph interpreted the dreams of the seven years of plenty and the seven lean years, Egypt was saved a catastrophe.

And yet we have rejected the images of the inner as belonging to mythological past or the psychiatrist's couch. Instead, we try to listen to the voices of the outer experts. But with so many newscasters, political and economic analysts, and even spiritual visionaries, how do we knoe who and what to trust? And do we even know how to listen?

But if we look carefully we can find a thread that links it all together - links our dreams and the stories on the news, links the trivia, the mundane and the sensational. There is a thread that is our collective destiny, and it is inside each of us as well as in the world around.

This thread is so simple it is overlooked. It is so ordinary we pass it by. It is in our hope, in our need to be loved, in the warmth of a handshake or the touch of a kiss. It is in the most basic connection between human beings, not the words we say but the very nature of communication. It is the simple fact that we all live together, whether in the slums or the suburbs. It is in the primal knowing that we are one.

In the simplicity of our human values, love and joy, and hope, we are all connected together. But we can only discover this connection when we return to this simple core of being. Otherwise we will fall apart with a world that has lost its center. When we return to this connection of the heart we will see what is being born, how a linking together of individuals, groups, and communities is taking place, how patterns of relationships are growing and how life energy is flowing along these patterns. Once again humanity is recreating itself, creating a new civilization amidst the old.

(Llwellyn Vaughan Lee)

Purpose of Life

Life is one, has always been one. It is a single, living, organic wholeness and everything in creation is a part of it, as vitally and inseparably related to the whole of life as an individual cell or organ is related to the larger organism of which it is a part. Life is alive, with its own intelligence and purpose.


And that purpose, which is our own purpose because we are not separate from life, is to bear witness to its Creator, to know and love and praise Him. “I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, and so I created the world” (Hadith): the world is God’s revelation, His knowing of Himself.

(Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee)

Path of Love

This sermon is based on a poetic excerpt from Ibn Arabi (1165‐1240). He was a Sunni Sufi Muslim mystic and philosopher who was born in the Muslim‐controlled Iberian Peninsula and lived in Spain from the ages of 8‐35, when he made a pilgrimage to Mecca. The poem is in Arabi’s book Tarjuman al‐Ashwaq or “Interpreter of All Desires.”

The poem:



My heart has become capable of every form
It is a pasture for gazelles,
And a monastery for Christian monks,
And a temple for idols,
And a Ka'aba of the pilgrims,
And the tablets of the Torah,
And the book of the Koran.
I follow the religion of Love:
Whatever path Love's camel takes