Hope Beyond Horror.

Preach Heaven- Eternal in Time.

Eternal life.  None of us would want eternal life if it were to be a life filled with pain, would we? At what point does quality of life supersede quantity of life?

I came face to face with my mother's mortality when the announcement was made that she had a cancer in her body and it wasn't curable, that any attempt to arrest the disease would be devastating to her physically and only give her a few extra months of life at most. The cancer doctor actually told us that in a person of my mother's age and health- late seventies, that to treat this particular cancer with chemo and radiation would be cruel. However, he said, if it were found in a person of our ages (fifties) then he would recommend an extreme course of very aggressive chemo/radiation, but such a course for my mother might in fact be what kills her.

While we knew my mother's cancer was bad and instinctively wanted her to be treated- to have that hope- she also had the mitigating circumstances of  having incurable Alzheimer's disease. At this point we all determined, my mother included, that no treatment for the cancer would be taken. She would continue on as normal and let the disease run its course while treating symptoms as they appeared with pain relieving medication.

It was all so surreal. I'd sit there in the evening and watch her watching television programs with us, smiling, laughing, enjoying herself and I'd know that inside her she was being destroyed by cancer. It didn't seem very real not until the last few months of her life when everything went downhill very, very fast.  During the blessed lull of her illness when we lived in the delusional state of her seeming okay- we filled her life with her favorite foods, her favorite past times- her grandkids and jigsaw puzzles. We offered her things knowing they'd possibly be the last time she experienced them. We let her eat what she wanted, and encouraged her to enjoy the things she'd deny herself to watch her weight. We tried to give her a good ending to her life those last few years after her diagnoses with Alzheimer's and then the cancer. We tried to give her quality of life knowing we weren't pushing for quantity, and she wanted quality over quantity as well.

Back to the statement I made at the start of this-  None of us would want eternal life if it were to be a life filled with pain, would we? Of course we wouldn't. Or maybe right now you're trying to determine the pain threshold you'd be willing to endure to live forever. Let's take over all quality of life as being horrific, would you then want to live forever in the horrific state of existence?  Would you want to live forever if you had to live your life in advanced old age where you could barely do anything at all? It's inevitable, yes? The longer we live the more we become less able to do the things we once could do. Even the healthiest of the aged will slow down. Very few of the very advanced in age - into their hundreds- are living a great quality of life that would be acceptable to endure forever.  We see pictures, watch videos of the hundred year old's birthday celebrations, and only occasionally are they vibrant with seeming youthful exuberance.  Why do even those who seem healthy and are able to get around fine, and are enjoying their lives, end up dying if they don't have any problems that are life threatening? What takes them from life? It could be any number of things- things that take younger people much earlier in their lives. Not every aged person who dies is suffering debilitating illnesses that make their lives awful, but a lot are.

For the sake of the statement made- None of us would want eternal life if it were to be a life filled with pain, would we?  We are going to add that the life filled with pain was one of constant agony with very little relief, and the relief mainly in the form of being unconscious in drug induced sleep. No one would want that kind of eternal existence. The life they lived would be unlivable if the pain kept them from doing everything that made life worth living.

Eternal life, the eternal life preached to us by our Savior, promised to us by the Father, God, is one without pain in any form whatsoever, a distress-free existence. 

Recently a few shows/movies and such I've seen have the concept that no one would be happy or want to live in a world without any conflict. They promoted the idea that it's the conflicts in our life that give them meaning. To know the good we have to know the evil. To feel true happiness we must know true pain. We need something to compare happiness to in order for us to realize we are happy. People will point out the lives of people who can buy anything they want, and then say they can't buy happiness and maybe only those truly in that position can attest to the validity of it. To believe that we must always and forever have to have bad in order to have good is a very flawed belief, one we cling to because to do otherwise is to have to comprehend truth.

The truth is existing as created beings, created out of love, meant to return love as well as receive love. Eternal life, this most precious of offered truths, allows us to comprehend hope beyond the horror.

Hope beyond the horror.  Most of us have horrors that have occurred in our lives, and if by chance you've happened to somehow live a horror free existence, you most certainly know others who haven't. You know of the horror even if it's not your personal horror.

The horror of life comes in many, many forms.  Horror - otherwise known as - intense fear, intense dislike, shock, disgust, unpleasant, unsightly, hopelessness, anxiety, terror, revulsion, repulsion, awfulness, distress, dread, alarm, panic-  you get the picture, yes?  The level of horror varies and can be subjective. I might find surgery on a person absolutely horrifying if I were required to be the surgeon, while another would find it exhilarating. Some might enjoy jumping out of an airplane while I would most likely die from the sheer terror of being in that position. There are horrors that everyone would find the same- torture, extreme torture being one of those horrors.  That this world is filled with horrors we hate to even imagine exist and often sob broken heartedly upon hearing of some of the horrors being enacted, is without a doubt.  And as long as even the tiniest horror exists we need hope beyond that horror. Hope beyond the worst of the worst and the least of the worst.

Hope beyond horror, the truth of eternal existence with no horror at all whatsoever. No horror for you, no horror for me, no horror for anyone at all.

Eternal life is offered to us, this hope beyond the horrors is given to us, and we must grasp hold of the hope and never let it go. We must live our lives filled with this hope. As one tragedy after another is personally dealt with, or whether you face tragedy within yourself we need to grasp the hope eternal offered to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Eternal life - preaching heaven- giving hope in eternal time.