Ten Thousand Years

“A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the father.” John 16:16

“They said therefore, ‘What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is saying.” John 16:18

About two thousand years ago Jesus prepared His disciples for His death, His sustained absence and their futures of persecution and hardship. He was preparing them to live in a broken world without Him. He was preparing them to seek the power of God through the “helper” – the Holy Spirit that would come and imbue their hearts with a mysterious power and hope. He was preparing them for a life of sorrow, yet telling them that it is only a little while.

The disciples and Jesus had a very different idea of what “a little while” meant. They would soon learn that “a little while” was a period of years, a lifetime even. They were learning the lesson that Moses, their great forefather recorded thousands of years before, “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past.” (Psalm 90:4) Perhaps this is why God’s story of creation, sin, redemption and glorification spans millennia. But we who are waiting get impatient, as we should. We were not created for this world.

Jesus knows this but recognizes that it is all part of the story. Sorrow MUST be turned into joy. That’s what makes this drama truly spectacular. God incorporates waiting and hardship into His plan for our refinement. Only in a world full of pain will the Kingdom of Heaven be longed for with an intensity that would be absent if life were easy.

“Therefore,” Jesus says, “you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” (John 16:22)

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years” John Newton so aptly wrote, our lives of pain and sorrow will be so distant, yet so indelibly etched into our eternal nature. Mark Driscoll said once that looking back a billion years from now will be like looking back on one memorable recess on the playground when we were kids. It will be so far away, and yet the blessing and rewards that we enjoy for eternity are in many ways dependent on how closely we follow and serve God here (see parable of the Ten Virgins and Talents in Matthew 25).

Jesus left the disciples only a few days after his resurrection. He left them with the express instruction to “tarry in the city of Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:49) Both literal and figurative – they were to tarry until they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, but also they were to tarry in this “old Jerusalem” with the promise of a “New Jerusalem” ahead. They were to go forth, living each day as a testimony to Him – living, journeying, teaching, preaching being tortured, humiliated, killed all in the name Christ and sustained by the hope of that “New Jerusalem.”

Here we are today. We are plagued with disappointments, with sickness, death, pain we never could have imagined, things we never planned for. Are we tempted to believe that God has dumped too much into our lap? Do we sometimes wonder why He can’t just let us be happy and peaceful for just a little while?

We’re not there yet. We live our lives in America striving with everything we have to be happy and prosperous. Trying to shelter ourselves as best as possible from the brokenness of the world. Keep it at an arms length. Safe inside the T.V. Miles away. It’s not the time for that. Today is when we live in a world of pain and sin. Tomorrow is when we rest, when we have real, perfect, fulfilled joy.

And the cool thing is that tomorrow lasts forever.

“So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)