Focusing on Eternity

               

As some of you might have guessed, I play a photographer on TV. Well… not really on TV, I just wanted to say that.

It might be more correct to say, “I sometimes carry around a camera and point it at stuff and when I’m done they sometimes look pretty awesome.”

Because I’m rather odd, I like using the manual focus on the camera. I like watching what once was fuzzy and messed up become clear and… well… focused.

So to me, that’s what focused means. To go from being crazy and fuzzy, to being clean and crisp.

My Great Grandpa wrote a sermon about focusing not as in on a camera, but on eternity, and he used Moses as his example.

Moses was probably raised and taught the epitome of knowledge known at the time. He probably wasn’t taught about the one true, God but about smaller gods.

Later in life, he killed an Egyptian who was mistreating an Israelite.

Moses then ran away and became a shepherd in the made of Midian.   

Throughout Moses’s life, one can notice something. When he focuses on God, and trusts and believes in him, amazing things happen.

God brings glory to His name and we see him move and carry his people through the high and rising waters.

But when Moses (and the people of Israel) focused themselves, or at the wind and waters around them, bad things happen.

They meet snakes, trials, sickness and death.

When one puts God first, they don’t lose anything, there are eternal rewards for all who will take their focus on God and not on themselves.

When you’re eyes are fixed on the finish line, then everything becomes crisp and clear. We can see that there is an eternal effect for everything that we do, and perhaps when we focus on that, everything else becomes sharper.

A note that my Great Grandpa, (written in green ink, which must mean it’s pretty important) is this:

“The man who estimates his life from only a human and temporal standpoint will go down in ultimate eternal defeat. In sharp contrast with this is the eternal viewpoint. All men who estimate life from the divine viewpoint are guaranteed final triumphs and eternal glory.”  

It is true that in this life, we have difficulties and many problems, but when we focus on God, the Cross and eternity and on his light and salvation, that everything else will become clear.

“Brothers and sisters, I know that I have not yet reached that goal, but there is one thing I always do. Forgetting the past and straining toward what is ahead. I keep trying to reach the foal and get the prize for which God called me through Christ to the life above.”

 ~Philippians 3:13-14

Rachel Joy and Burt Pearson