What If You Had 1,000 Years Left To Live?

“In almost everything that touches our everyday life on earth, God is pleased when we’re pleased. He wills that we be as free as birds to soar and sing our maker’s praise without anxiety.” ~A.W. Tozer

At some point in your life someone has asked you:

“If you only had one day left to live what would you do?”

The point of this question is to get you to think about what is most important to you, because presumably you would spend your last day only doing those things.

Most people say things like…

I would spend it with my family or

I would take that drive to the beach that I had been putting off or

I would run on the street naked through downtown

You get the idea.

While I think this question accomplishes the goal of getting you to think about what to do with the limited time you have, it’s a tragically flawed question for anyone that is a follower of Jesus Christ.

You see as a follower of Jesus we don’t have limited time to live. 

No we have the exact opposite we are going to live forever. We have crossed over from death to eternal life. Which means that there will never again be a time where we don’t exist.

A few years ago I was contemplating this idea of eternal life and I couldn’t get my mind around what that means. 

How do you even begin to plan to live forever?

I mean I can plan to one day finish high school and then set goals that get me to that point. I can plan to finish college and see what it looks like to one day do that. I can see one day getting married and having kids. I can see watching my kids grow up and one day leave the house. Then I can plan on growing old and retiring on my front porch swing with my sweetie. And finally I can see dying one day with my family around me, and the lights going out…forever.

But that’s not how my story ends.

My life here on earth right now is just the beginning of a much bigger adventure that lasts forever. The friendships I am building now still have millions of years of memories to be made! I will get to meet and know not just my grandkids but my great, great, great grandkids! So as you can imagine my mind was about to explode because the thought of eternity was pretty overwhelming. So to begin to grasp what I would do with eternity...

...I looked to God who has existed forever.

God could have done anything with His time but He chose to spend it enjoying time with us and with His creation.

 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the 

LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day...

 – Genesis 3:8a

The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save.  

He will take great delight in you; 

He will quiet you with His love. 

He will rejoice over you with singing.

 – Zephaniah 3:17

God could have been doing anything..

 

Forming new worlds

Creating new animals

Placing more stars in the night sky

But instead of being busy with all of that, He just wants to spend time with us enjoying this big world that He created.

When faced with how to spend eternity…

...God chooses to spend it with us.

You see the question to us isn’t what would you do with just one day left, but what would you do if you had thousands of days left, or better yet what if you had thousands of years left?

What if you had 1,000 years left? How would you spend it?

Since I have a thousand years left to live I will take a cue from God and

Be present where ever I am

Enjoy this beautiful creation instead of just rushing through everyday

Love people and relationships above the pursuit of success and money

God is present. 

When you are with God He isn’t distracted or withdrawn. He isn’t thinking about what He has to do next or His tasks for the day, no He is there with you.

So many times I have been guilty of not being present when I am at home with my family or even when someone is having a face to face conversation with me. But now that I have 1,000 years to live I can take the time to listen and be there in that moment because I have plenty of time to get all of the important tasks done.

God loves spending time with us.

God is by nature a creator, but His creative drive takes a back seat to spending time with people.

In my last season of life I put striving for success and money and working my job above my family relationships and above my relationships with my friends. Until one day I turned around and couldn’t remember the last time I took my mom out to lunch or the last time we sat around late at night and laughed around the table with good friends or when my kids and I just played, with no time limit.

God loves the earth. 

God loves just walking around the earth enjoying the sunshine, playing with his animals, and feeling the cool wind on His face. God doesn’t overfill His days, causing Him to constantly be in a hurry. He just takes life one step at a time, enjoying every tree and flower along the way.

Rich Mullins, the late singer/songwriter once said…

‘It would be wonderful if you knew the names of the trees between your house and where you work, between your house and your church. If you knew that that was a tulip tree and you knew that that 

was a red bud. It would be great if you knew the names of the constellations. 

It would be great if you knew something about your neighbors.”

He’s right so often we are in too much of a hurry to enjoy what is all around us. For me to have a grateful and thankful heart I must first recognize all that is so wonderful around me.

So with my next thousand years I am going to

laugh more,

love deeper

sleep in the sunshine

dance in my underwear

enjoy the work that I do

plant a garden and watch it grow

listen to music that makes me happy

make memories that lead to funny inside jokes

be present mentally and physically as my kids grow up

love my wife, the way I did that first summer, when we had nothing but each other

know my God, really get to know Him so when I see Him in Heaven it won’t be awkward

I came so they can have real and eternal life, 

more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

 – Jesus (from John 10:10b)