Melancholy

Today I have been melancholy about many things - some of which was encouraged by melancholy/saddening classical music in a particular setting. It was not that melancholy I wish to speak of, though.

Today I realized, again, that I cannot comprehend anything after death. Not that I don't believe in life after death or the judgement that is to come, or the new heaven and earth and Jerusalem, etc, I do, believe me I do. I just cannot wrap my mind around it. My flesh is convinced this life is it. My spirit urges me otherwise, but cannot fathom what it means. There is a mistaken concept that there will be no time in [the new] heaven (TNH). I say mistaken because there cannot be months in TNH without time. How do I know there are months? Revelation 22:1-2 say, "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." How could there be months if there was no sense of time? How could anything change consistently according to a measure of time if there was no time? Anyway, I digress.

No longer do I have to try and imagine life without time, it will still be around. I cannot fathom eternity though. Living forever ... I mean I can barely conceive of living to 120. It just doesn't happen (except on rare occasions when it does, logical, I know). But we will live to be 120x120x120x120 and so on forever. I cannot comprehend (for the curious that problem I put forth comes to 24,883,200,000 [24 billion, 883 million, and 200 thousand years old] !!!) Not only does this bother me, but I cannot imagine standing before God giving an account of my life. We will be held accountable for every careless word we speak (Matthew 12:36-37).

What a frightening thought.

How am I to account for my sinful actions that I willing did in spite of knowing God's command. Praise the Lord for grace and the death and resurrection of Jesus! Still I cannot fathom what it will be like to realize how holy He is, and how wretched I am. This is quite disappointing for it does not help instill in my the fear of the Lord, and it does not help me realize how stupid I and my sins are. How embarrassed shall we all be to stand before God and say "I know I really should have said I took so and so's pen but I said Suzy took it because it was a really cool pen" (or some similar, equally ridiculous statement). How utterly dreadful.

But I write this with no feeling.

My mind, strangely enough, tells me it will be dreadful and a horrible sight to behold. My heart, it just feels slightly numb trying to make me stop thinking about it (Jeremiah 17:9). I think my flesh is scared that one day, on earth, I will realize the utter horror of my sin and actually focus on God as I should. See I know I ought to serve God more than I do. I know I ought to really focus on Him, and I desire to. My spirit desires to, but when I want to do good evil is right there with me (Romans 7:21).

Thus the reason for my melancholyness.

I desire to know God; I desire to do His will wholeheartedly; I desire to understand His way; I desire to grasp the horror of sin and the amazingness of His grace; I desire to understand the joy of being with Him eternally. I don't though. I don't, and I really want to. I want to glorify Him. I want to point people to Him. I want to be a reflection of Him so that when people see me they see straight to Him. I fail so often. I need to snap out of this funk because I'm not going to be a very good witness moping about not comprehending Him or His ways (Isaiah 55:8-9).

So, here I am.


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