bible and theology on Permanence

Before Seattle resident Edith Macefield died at age eighty-six in 2008, she refused to sell her house to developers for the $1 million they had purportedly offered. Macefield wanted to die at home. Se...

And in this vision, he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind’s eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, ‘What can this be?’...

The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.

There are real and very important differences between what we now call values and the virtues as they had traditionally been understood. Let me put it this way. A value is like a smoke ring. Its shape...

The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long fo...

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

Everlasting life consists in the eternal habitation of God in the faithful through the Holy Spirit; in a true and perfect knowledge of God, and of His works and will, kindled in the heart immediately ...

To abide is to continue, persevere, never cease to be within this eternal divine energy into which God alone can introduce us and then keep us and cause us to remain . . . . It is only in God that we ...

Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

Let us treasure up in our soul some of those things which are permanent..., not of those which will forsake us and be destroyed, and which only tickle our senses for a little while.

In his book Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth , Hugh Halter opens with an unlikely scenario: taking his teenage daughter to get her first tattoo. While watching his daughter get “inked...

The sense that we will live forever somewhere has shaped every civilization in human history…the unifying testimony of the human heart through history is belief in life after death. Anthropological ev...

Memory is more indelible than ink.

Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love ...

Though we cannot experience our life as an endless present, we are eternal in God's eyes; that is, in our deepest reality.

Eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, "life to the limit.”

Influence never dies; every act, emotion, look and word makes influence tell for good or evil, happiness or woe, through the long future of eternity.

Let temporal things serve your use, but the eternal be the object of your desire.

That only is worth my having which I can have forever. That only is worth my grasping which death cannot tear out of my hand.

The three immutable facts: You own stuff. You will die. Someone will get that stuff.

The meaning of creation remains unexplainable so long as the veil covers the eternal Image. This life would be nothing but destiny, this time only sorrow, all love but decay, if the pulse of Being did...

Eternal life is not something that is dispensed in passing as if from a drive-through window, irrespective of one's ongoing relationship with Jesus.

Right now counts forever.

Spiritual maturity is measured in terms of persevering faith, not perfect behavior.

My body continually takes me into place . It is at once agent and vehicle, articulator and witness of being-in-place.

The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything is has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous thi...

Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?

The immortal Spirit . . . is forever tugging us toward him.

Leader: Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. All: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you a...

Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near e...