In his poem called “Heaven,” Rupert Brooke tries to imagine a fish’s view of reality.
“Is there anything beyond this Pond, this Stream, beyond this wet world?” his fish wonders. “Is this all there is?” But then his hypothetical fish gasps, in effect, “How ghastly if there were more!” What self-respecting fish would want to live in a world that is not wet?
So we humans, confined now to our peculiar element, ponder our own limits. Is this world of dust and blood the whole of Existence? Surely some Power energizes Life beyond our puny frailty. Surely some Mind processes meaning and mysteries beyond our partial perceptions.
Everything within us cries out that there must be more. “Not here the appointed End,” the poet protests, “not here!”
“Dust to dust,” the Bible describes our mortal round. “Mud to mud,” the poet parodied. What a poor, mean, cruel thing would this life be if its end turned out to be nothing more than a hole in the sod.
Indeed, if the grave is the sum of it, why do we spend uncountable hours poring over books, ciphering the accumulated scribblings of the ages, seeking insight and wisdom? Why do we invest our days to hone skills that inevitably will be filched by old age or death?
My friend, now ravaged by radiation and chemotherapy, spends most of every week surrounded by hairless, emaciated souls who visit the state-of-the-art medical center for the same reason he does. Right now this is his life. Like the fish in Brooke’s pond, he has a hard time seeing past the pond scum.
But there must be more to life than this. If not, why does my friend subject himself to the rigors of a cure that kills more good cells than bad? Why does he accept the indignities—the massive medical insults to mind and body—unless some larger, compelling purpose defines his life, both now and Later?
Wrestling with this very question, the apostle Paul advises us to find our answers by looking back at the cross: “Indeed we share in Christ’s sufferings.”
We can also find perspective, he says, by looking forward to Eternity: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”