Daily Reading for May 6
When I was just out of college, I was going through a particularly rough time. I was alone in a new town, far away from home and family and friends, and trying to figure out a new job, cope with an eccentric boss, and learn a new way of life. It was a rough transition. I was starting over from scratch, building a new life. It was hard and lonely work.
One day I received a greeting card in the mail from a friend who knew that I had been down about all this. The front of the card said, “Keep looking down.”
I reacted with a smirk. I’m already looking down! That’s my problem! But then I opened the card. “Keep looking down . . . you are seated with Christ in the heavenlies.”
According to Ephesians 2:6, that’s the way Jesus looks at our lives. We’re already with him in eternity. We are living above the counterfeit and have entered into the authentic. We are beyond the temporal and temporary and fleeting, and we are living in the eternal with the one who loves us so much he died for us.
Jesus knew his death was approaching. He knew the purpose of that death: to give “real and eternal” life to those who had entered into his circle of love. You are in that circle now. It is the circle of those who know God, the one and only true God, and the Son whom he sent. It is the circle of those who are living, right now, the “real and eternal life.”
Realizing this can put your life into context. The fears, doubts, loneliness, and longings you may be feeling are not the ultimate reality. Yes, they’re real. You feel them deeply. But they are temporary. They’re not the whole story. The real and eternal life you’ve been given is happening right now.
Do you realize it? Can you see it?
From “The Eternal Now” in Living Loved: Knowing Jesus as the Lover of Your Soul by Peter Wallace. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org