Emmanuel Ndikumana was nineteen years old when he learned that a group of young men in Burundi planned to murder him in two weeks. Despite the threat, he chose to stay and survived the attempt through what he describes as God’s providence. When recounting his story, Emmanuel noted, “You Americans have a strange attitude toward death; you act as if it is the end.”
The truth is, we find greater joy in this life when we understand it is not our only opportunity for fulfillment, nor is it our best one. While many secular books on happiness insist we must find total satisfaction in the present because this life is all we have, the Christian worldview offers a different perspective. Believers can look forward to an eternity of present-tense happiness, an assurance that infuses our current lives with lasting joy.
Theologian Jonathan Edwards observed that God’s people are invited not only to dwell with Christ but to inherit a kingdom with Him. He wrote that they are called to “receive the honour and happiness of a heavenly kingdom,” noting that God created heaven specifically for their delight. This eternal perspective transforms how we experience happiness today.
In the ages to come, we’ll remember past happiness and its cause (God) and look forward to future happiness and its cause (God). So if you’re not happy today, or if your happiness isn’t as deep as you wish, relax. Take a deep breath. You’re not missing your only opportunity to be happy! The time is coming when there will be nothing you can do except be happy. And that time will never end! Still, the Bible makes clear that God doesn’t want you to wait until then to be happy in Christ.
All who know Jesus will live together in that resurrected world, with the Lord we love and the friends we cherish. We’ll embark together on the ultimate adventure in a spectacular new universe awaiting our exploration and dominion.
Jesus will be the center of everything. Happiness will be the lifeblood of our resurrected lives. And just when we think, It doesn’t get any better than this—it will!
If we come to understand the biblical doctrine of the resurrection and the New Earth, we’ll find exactly what we all wish for. So let’s be sure we understand it! How kind of God to provide for us exactly what he wired us to most desire—to be in His presence forever, delighting in Him and each other and enjoying our lives together.
Father Boudreaux wrote in Happiness of Heaven, “Never can there come a day when He will frown upon us, and make us feel that His love for us has grown cold. . . . Never will there come a day when His divine beauty will fade away, or when He will lose his power of making us happy.”
Think of it: millions of years from now, in the presence of the happy God who will never tire of us, we’ll still be young. We’ll be able to say every day, “I will never be separated from my endlessly loving and creative God and Savior, the source of all happiness. Every day has been better than the one before . . . and the best is still yet to be!”
This article originally appeared on EPM.org and is reposted here by permission.