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Live Long
By Scott Harrup | January 26, 2010
The cover of the February 2010 special issue of U.S. News and World Report offers to tell you “How to Live to 100.” Visiting cnn.com today, I ran across a video and summary article, both “Uncovering Secrets to a Longer Life” and focusing on centenarians.
A promotional copy of a new book recently sent to the Pentecostal Evangel’s office claimed to show readers how to live to 120 — apparently that author’s estimate of God’s preferred life span for His followers.
You can find practical advice on healthy life choices in each of the above sources. But all three have a common limiting factor — a barely-three-digit number. “You can live to 100 (or 120!) if you’ll do A, B and C.” (In fairness, the book’s author, like me, does not focus exclusively on this life.)
But try to imagine an alternate proposal. “You can live forever if you’ll do A, B and C.”
Just how long is “forever”?
I was blogging about John 3:16 in 2008 (you can read that article here) and cited one writer’s estimate of the molecules in a single teaspoonful of air — 100 billion billion. You could live a century for every one of those molecules and you would still be at the beginning of “forever.” The same holds true if you lived a century for every molecule of air in our planet’s atmosphere, for every molecule in our entire planet, or for every molecule in the observable universe. That’s an unfathomable stack of centuries, and still the beginning of “forever.”
U.S. News wants to tell me how to live a single century. The Bible offers exclusive information on that “forever” life span. I’m not going to ignore good advice on how to make the best use of the years God gives me here and now — but I know which set of facts deserves my closest attention.
Topics: News |
