Over the next few weeks in our Rooted in Christ Study, we’ll be looking at some of the favorite passages from our staff at St. Matthew’s UMC. These are some of the parts of the Bible to mean to most to our staff.

Today’s reading is John 17: 1-6

This reading today includes what I feel like is a very important passage.  What is eternal life?  That’s something everyone in the Gospels seeks to know and to understand. What is eternal life?  What is heaven?  What is that gift and paradise that we seek?  Today we get a glimpse of what it is.  Jesus is praying to His father and He asks that His followers know eternal life.  What is that eternal life?  It is knowing God and Jesus Christ. By the way, the means through which we know the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. This very act of knowing God is an act that is only possible through the Trinity.

Eternal life is knowing God.  In heaven, all the things that keep us fully from God will be no more, no more sin, pain, death, corruption, all of this, it will be fully gone. We will fully know God. That is eternity, fully knowing God and being fully known by God (1 Corinthians 13:12). But here’s the thing. That starts now.  That’s not just a one-day thing, that’s a today thing.  Today, this moment, we can know God. That’s a foretaste of eternity. That’s the beginning.  We can start eternity today.  Not fully, not completely, but we can start now.

Eternity is not just a one-day thing. It’s a today thing.  Today, let’s know God with all that we are.  And in doing that, we start eternity.

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