I called on one of our older people today at a rehab center which is also a nursing home. Pop music was playing over the sound system and the first song that caught my attention was John Lennon:
Imagine there’s no heaven . . .
It didn’t seem to me like “Imagine there’s no heaven” was a popular thought at the nursing home.
The next song spinning on the nursing home juke box was, “I had the time of my life,” and that one didn’t look like it was going to climb the nursing home charts either.
I understand that people loved I had the Time of My Life in Dirty Dancy. Imagine went platinum for all I know. But, neither song works very well in the nursing home. I didn’t interview the people sitting about in wheel chairs, but my guess is that not a lot of them are dreaming that there’s no heaven. Nobody looked to be having the time of their life. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey were nowhere in sight.
So. I decided to go with the Apostle Paul rather than a meditation on John Lennon. I read aloud to the person I was visiting 2 Cor 4:16-18, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all . . . For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Excellent Chris. Not only warmly and pastorally encouraging, but this shows that Christianity IS the only belief system that brings real hope. As Francis Schaeffer was so keen on, Christianity is the only world view we can live with consistently.