What’s Your Future Hold?
He has made everything appropriate in its time. Also He has set eternity in their heart, yet so that man may not find out the work which God has done from beginning to end. ~ ECCLESIASTES 3:11 (NAS)
When I was a young woman, I was invited to a palm reader at a neighbor’s home. I was skeptical, yet I wanted to know the future. I remember nothing she said about my future. No great prediction. Later, after dedicating my heart to the Lord and learning from scripture that the Lord forbade such things, I renounced them, asked forgiveness, and destroyed all the material I had gathered. (Deut. 18:10-14; Lev. 19:31, 20:6)
Most people want to know what the future holds. And some Christians still read their horoscopes (for what they think is harmless fun). (Dan. 2:27) We want our future settled. We create IRAs, plan pensions, make wills and medical directives, and purchase cemetery plots. We want to know our future is taken care of, yet eternal life is the only concern that can be settled. In St. Augustine, Florida, where Ponce De Leon landed in 1513, there’s the legendary Fountain of Youth (in a hole in the ground). You can drink from a supplied plastic cup from the spigot. The water tastes brassy and has
provided no documented healing or rejuvenation. Yet people still come.
In Punta Gorda, Florida, another Fountain of Youth site offers a spigot producing water laced with radioactive radium and sulfur; it smells like rotten eggs. It has a warning sign on it from the health department. Yet for
a hundred years, people from miles around have traveled there for a sip. Looking to live longer or maybe forever? Move to Florida where the highest number of seniors live in this country. Yet no statistics prove they live longer. To worry about the afterlife can be puzzling. We don’t know what it’s really like. And we don’t know why God loves us like He does. We only
know His promise to prepare a place and receive us in His Father’s house. No prophet, sorcerer, medium, or astrologist can predict or confirm our getting there. And all the savings, work, and stored up supplies don’t assure us of eternal life either. The only act that can assure our eternal existence
with God is the one Jesus paid for each of us — His death on the cross. God placed eternity in our hearts. Do you know where your eternity is
or what your future holds? I pray it’s in Jesus.
Most gracious Father, thank you for your everlasting love and sending Jesus to prepare the only way to eternity in heaven.
PASTOR SHERRY ZAPPOLA, RETIRED