Abundant Life
Dr. John K. Mathew
A boy asked his mother.
Mom, at what age do people die?
The mother said, go to a nearby cemetery, read all the gravestones:
The boy came back and said. People can die at any age.
True, whoever comes to life must drink from the cup of death.
It is so sad that people die at an early age regardless of their spiritual status, which means the sinner and the saved.
Then, what is the meaning of the statement of Jesus Christ, that he came that we may have life and "have it to the full"?
He clearly says that this fullness is given to those who believe in him or those who enter through him, the door.
These lines of Graham W. Hughes make sense. "It is not the length of a man's life that matters, but what he does with it." "It is not how long he lives, but how he lives, that counts." The poet, Keats died in his youth, and yet he gave to the world for all time some of the loveliest poetry the tongue of man can recite. A greater than Keats died on a lonely cross when he was only thirty-three, after putting all eternity into three brief years.
Some men have lived to be a hundred and when they have gone to whatever reward was coming to them the world has been none the poorer for their departure.
Others have been spared only a quarter or half that time, and mankind has been all the happier, all the richer and better, for their stay here on the earth.
You can't take a measuring line to human life. Its length you can calculate but its value belongs to the eternities. This is exactly the meaning of what Jesus said.
His focus was not on our life in this world but on eternity. Here lies the meaning of the statement of Jesus that he who believes in him will have eternal life, life in its fullness.
G. H. Clothier aptly said: "Life means to me not only the blessing of itself but the promise of a higher life- and I live it joyously, devoutly, hopefully, and lovingly accepting it, as a divinely appointed schooling, which when it shall arrive at what is called the "end" will have placed me happily at a new beginning."