THE LONG WAY HOME

(By: Stanley J. Borley)

If there is only one God, how many true stories can there be about who we are, how we came to be here and where we are we going? It seems the harder we try to find the answers the more conflicting stories we come up with. There can only be one true story; one right answer to each question. If there really is a creator, a god, why doesn't he just let us know the truth? Maybe he did!

I suppose, like all pilgrims I have led a rather unusual life. I searched in life for truth and happiness in many places: through reading, relationships with women; mind expanding drugs; adventure, travel, new-age philosophy, mysticism and the occult. I was distracted from the truth about myself for several years by alcohol, drug abuse and criminal activities. I nearly lost my life and freedom many times and never understood why so many died living the way I had while I continued to exist. Underlying the passion and excitement of spontaneous living was an undercurrent of discontent; and for the most part I was unhappy and unfulfilled.  

Eventually I bought into our materialistic western values in the hope that peace of mind could be purchased. I accumulating the things that television had brain washed me into thinking I needed to be complete. I bought the whole package with the quest for money and the toys that come with it. By the early nineties I had a wife and family, our own home in the Canadian paradise of the Okanogan Valley, a high paying union job and the leisure time to enjoy it all. Even with all of this I became increasingly cynical and cold hearted.  

Eventually I was barely capable of feeling anything except a gloomy sense that life wasn't worth living. Most of the time I felt numb inside except when I was high; and at those times my emotions were intense and often out of control. I suspected that love was what I needed, but I didn't know how to accept or give it; and neither did I trust it. Love was the key but I didn't know where or how to find it. It seemed as if the world didn't have the love that I had missed as a child and couldn't find enough of in others.  

Finally, in middle age and after three years of sobriety: broke, broken, alone and helpless I came across an inexhaustible reservoir. I could never have imagined that in the twinkle of an eye I would be submerged in a pool of love so deep that my mind couldn't fathom it. If love was liquid and all that I had given and received in my life was in one place it would have been only a drop in the ocean compared to this. Not that my life had been overwhelmingly devoid of love, but it had just never been enough. I didn't find this paradise by traveling or learning.  

To arrive here I had to abandon the search that relied on my own understanding. It was by yielding my will to the one who created me that led to the revelation that the things of this world can't quench our thirst for love forever. I came to see that all the world has to offer can only give temporary relief for our parched souls. I was shown that there is only one true story about we human beings, and it's a love story, a story of hope and promise. "Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13 NIV) 

My older sister, my younger brother and I were raised in a small mining town in northern Saskatchewan/Manitoba. Flin Flon was a rowdy border town at the end of number ten highway about five hundred miles north west of Winnipeg. In those days my hometown was both figuratively and literally at the end of a very long and rough road. It was the last outpost and must have been a foreboding place for my mom. 

My mother was a Christian and although she was deeply involved in her religion, she did not show the love of God that they talked about in church, but instead was coldly unaffectionate, and was a harsh disciplinarian. Her sober and religious nature was at odds with the raucous life-style that prevailed in the isolated north country. Because I had a rebellious nature and was more like my father than my siblings, I took the brunt of her discipline. However, she was a woman of great integrity and honesty and worked hard at obeying what she believed to be the truth as found in the Bible; and her heart softened as the years went by. As a child I felt that she didn't love me, but over the years I realized that she always had. Although my parents shared some of their positive traits, mom was very different from my father.

Although my mother neither drank nor smoked, my father did both. Dad was a rebel at heart and, although he believed in God, he had no use for religion. He was a reader and a deep thinker and had uncovered at least one truth: that the mind of man is not capable of understanding the mind of God. He fit in with the mining town atmosphere much better than mom did. I learned from him, my uncles and many of my friends' parents that drinking, playing, working and fighting hard are what men do; and that winning is everything. However, my dad was also an honest, hard working man and was respected by many of his peers for his integrity and upfront, sometimes controversial, candor.  

He was a union leader, an alcoholic as well as a workaholic and wasn't around much when I was a child. He was up and off to work before I got out of bed in the mornings and most nights didn't get home until I was asleep. I don't remember seeing much of him until he sobered up when I was about thirteen years old. The few memories that I do have of him before that time are not very pleasant. Once he had been sober for awhile he tried to make up for the time he had lost with me, but it was too late; the dye had been cast. 

I had learned that real men don't cry or show weakness of any kind and that they are to be independent and never rely on anyone but themselves for anything. This kind of attitude was also typical of the work, drink and fight 'till you drop hard rock miners of my hometown. The contradictions that I saw in my parents and the lack of affection from both of them served to confuse me and seriously damage my faith in the love of people and of God, if there even was such a being. And the lack of a positive male role model gave me a warped idea of what being a man was all about.  

I rebelled against my mother and her values, against society in general and embraced an independent, self-serving life style. I was stealing and lying by the time I was twelve and was drinking on a regular basis before I was in high school. I battled with my parents and the establishment throughout my youth and discovered what jail was about by the time I was seventeen. If others wouldn't give me what I needed to feel happy I would find out on my own what I needed and get it for myself. I somehow felt that what I required couldn't be found at home, so I left and continued my search in the city. 

After a few months of living by my wits in Calgary, I found myself in the Spy Hill Provincial Goal (prison). The isolation and the aggression of the inmates scared me straight for a few months and after I was released I went home and returned to high school. I finished grade ten, hired on at the mine and tried hard to walk the straight and narrow. I kept my drinking to weekends and stayed out of trouble for a couple years until I started experimenting with marijuana. As my drinking and drugging increased what little moral integrity I had left and my fear of the law decreased. Less than a year after my first toke, I quit my job, moved to Winnipeg and slipped into the sex, drugs and rock and roll scene of the early seventies and was earning much of my living selling illegal drugs. The philosophy of the flower children and anti-war hippies that I was hanging with appeared to offer the hope of the peace that was missing in the world and the love that was missing in my life. And I discovered that the hallucinogenic drugs we were experimenting with seemed to offer the promise of a strange kind of enlightenment and freedom from my painful internal reality.

The depth of insight that I achieved while under the influence of LSD was astounding and for a time I was convinced that only those of us who experienced the surrealistic revelations of the drug could share in the expanded consciousness of a new and enlightened generation. I thought that the problems of mankind could be solved by mind-expanding chemistry. I joined Timothy Leery in his quest for ultimate enlightenment through opening the previously locked doors of the mind. The mystical tone of LSD and other similar drugs was something of a spiritual carrot dangling in front of our noses. It seemed to me as if anything as deeply transcendental as this must have some spiritual value.  

However, after about a year of this pilgrimage I discovered that the true answers to the big questions about life could not be found there. And the changes that were taking place in my reality were far from positive. No matter how much we "hippies" expanded our minds they weren't big enough to handle the job of changing basic human nature. However, I hung on to the faint hope that the untapped brain cells of the human mind could somehow redeem the fallen human race. As I became more disillusioned with the "softer drugs," I changed my focus to whatever would make me feel better than I did when I was straight. I quickly regressed to the point where I would abuse almost anything that promised an immediate high. 

I left the flower children behind and my new friends were bikers, robbers and dealers. My search for the ultimate rush by injecting the street drug, MDA led me to a psychologically devastating overdose. I can't begin to describe the intensity of the mental anguish I caused myself at that one moment in time. I suffered the soul wrenching agony of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome for several years and still have some lingering minor symptoms from the damage that I did to my mind and body. Although the experience scared me away from the drug lifestyle for a while, by the time I reached my early thirties I was finding my way back into the scene. 

After a few years of what I considered a normal life, a three-year marriage, the inevitable divorce and failed live-in relationship with another woman, I merged back into the fast lane. I discontinued the construction work that I had been earning my living with and started working for an old friend who was dealing drugs on an international scale. I soon found myself involved in criminal activities in North America and eventually South East Asia. Cocaine, scotch whiskey, prostitutes and adrenaline offered a temporary diversion from my emotional wounds and distracted me from feeling the impact of the loss of the women in my life. But the more the decadence ensnared me, the clearer it became that this was the road to destruction and I had better change coarse in a hurry.. 

Although my lifestyle reflected self-centered and morally depraved values, I had always harbored a deep concern for humanity and had always pondered the big questions like: is there a god, if so does he care about us; and who are we and why are we here? I had an unquenchable spiritual thirst and over the years had read many different philosophies, investigated several religions and avidly searched for truth and peace of mind in some diverse and absurd places. My desire for enlightenment not only led me through the mind expanding drug experience of the sixties and seventies, but also through North American native mysticism; eastern religions and meditation disciplines and various occult activities. In later years I investigated new age philosophies such as the Celestine Prophesies, The Tenth Insight and the teachings of the New Age guru, Depak Chopra. Although most of these seemed to hold some hope of finding truth, they all left me with more questions than answers and wondering if there even was such a thing as absolute truth. However, I did have a few spiritual experiences along the way. 

Once while high on LSD, I slipped into a meditative state called Brahma and it seemed as if I had reached a profound level of enlightenment. Although this was definitely transcendental, and appeared to be spiritual, it was devoid of love and left me with a strong feeling that something was missing. If this was a true spiritual experience how was it that I arrived there by ingesting man made chemicals? There are those who practice physical and mental discipline for years to achieve that state of mind and I just happened across it. A similar experience while under the influence of mescaline was equally confusing. Neither experience held much hope of finding the ultimate truth or lasting love nor did either do anything to change me.  

Some of my searching led me to philosophers who would have me believe that I was OK as I was and didn't need to change; but something deep inside of me said that there was much more to being human than this. No matter how many books I read or how hard I meditated on the meaning of life and in spite of what I thought I had discovered, I still felt lost and incomplete. After I had exhausted the possibility of finding peace of mind through philosophical, religious and mystical channels I changed my focus to other people. Maybe a wife and children could supply the love that I needed to be happy; and besides, maybe there was no truth to be found at all. By then I had come to suspect that all of us create our own truth and perhaps each one is as valid as the next. 

Having a family in my late thirties, giving up the hard drugs and crime, and achieving a level of material success through honest labor gave me some comfort for a few years, but it didn't last. The more I accumulated what I thought I needed to be complete, the more bitter and cynical I became. By the time I reached my early forty's my drinking and my behavior while drunk was becoming more unpredictable. My common-law wife, daughter and stepsons were living much of the time in fear of the next drunken rage. There were times when I turned my anger inward and would find myself late at night sitting in my back yard pondering the idea of suicide. I knew that my drinking had a lot to do with how I felt but my attempts at quitting always failed. I read all the self-help books, saw a counselor and a psychiatrist and used all the will power I could muster, but nothing kept me sober for more than a few weeks. Finally after losing a cousin and an uncle to alcohol related suicide, I realized I was in serious trouble. I was finally humbled enough to try Alcoholics Anonymous. After all, my late father had been in the program and it had worked for him. 

In AA they said that the root of my problem was spiritual and that a god of my own understanding would help me if I would just allow him to. I had come to believe that there was a creator, but was prejudiced against religion and if anyone had mentioned Jesus at a meeting I would likely have been out the door. However, I was open minded enough to try a spiritual approach. I didn't believe that he was a personal god, but I was willing to keep my mind open and try praying.  

I began reading the AA Big Book, attending two or three meetings a week and saying the serenity prayer on a daily basis. Most of the time while praying it felt as if I was talking to myself, but something deeper than my feelings motivated me to keep it up. As the weeks became months I realized that for the first time in thirty years the compulsion to drink had left me. (Even after suffering much loss over the next three years of sobriety I would have no desire to drink or drug.) Finally, after all of my searching, it seemed as if the God that I was now praying to was giving me the power that I needed to change. However, after I was sober about six months my life began to fall apart. 

My common-law wife of seven years and mother of my daughter had continued with the drinking and partying lifestyle and we separated. The loss of my family turned quickly from sorrow to anger and I was consumed with rage and fantasies of revenge against her and her new boyfriend. I knew that my anger wouldn't do anyone any good so I tried to let it go but it just got worse. I decided to let God have a chance and, much to my surprise, my rage disappeared after just a couple weeks of prayer. I was pretty sure by then that some mysterious power greater than me had been hearing my prayers and at least cared enough about me to keep me sober and free from murderous fantasies. It wasn't my will power that had done it; I didn't have any when it came to alcohol, drugs and self-control. I wasn't brainwashed; any psychologist will tell you that it takes a lot more than four or five hours of AA meetings a week to brainwash someone. It wasn't a strong faith in God that was working in me; the size of my faith was no bigger than a mustard seed at that time. God was indeed working in me at a level much deeper than my conscious mind; and as time went by I discovered that much of what I was learning in AA had come from the Bible. 

I began to meet Christians in the program and I started to read the Bible for myself. The more I read, the more interested in the book I became; and I came to see that the Bible was not at all what I had been led to believe. I had never thought of the Bible as a spiritual book, but as just another religious fairy tale or an absurd mythology. Most of what I thought I knew about the Christian religion had come from critics of the faith who, as I began to see, had no idea of what they were talking about. Even much of what I had heard from Christians themselves indicated that many of them had a very shallow understanding of their own religion.  

However, some of the Christians that I was meeting in AA had a serenity, compassion and an integrity of character that seemed to be sincere. I started to see that what the Bible said about how people should and should not live was true to my life; and that some of the characters in the book had searched for happiness in the same places as I had, and suffered the same disappointments. I also saw that much of what religious people do in the name of God, and have done throughout history, is clearly defined and spoken against in the book itself. 

Religion comes from the human intellect; love comes from the spirit. The disciple James said "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27 NIV) Many religious zealots in these times have no better understanding of the spiritual message of the Bible than the Pharisees in Jesus' time had of the message of the scriptures. Jesus had some harsh words for those religious hypocrites and warned people to beware of their teachings.  

The Bible is a very powerful book and like anything with power, it is dangerous in the hands of people with the wrong motive. It is still the best selling book in all history and could well be the most misunderstood and misused. And contrary to what "popular opinion" (a widely accepted belief system gleaned from television and other entertaining forms of misinformation) would have us believe, the Bible and the life of Christ has done more to impact the history of man than any other writings or any other man's life, including those of the Greek philosophers. Virtually the whole world counts time from before and after the birth of Jesus, not Socrates or Plato. 

The more I read, the clearer it became that the Bible was a very spiritual book indeed and not a religious text at all. I had heard that Christianity was a relatively new religion because it was only two thousand years old. I realized that from a spiritual perspective it is actually much older, because the Bible predicts Jesus' coming thousands of years before he was born. Men like King David had an intimate relationship with his spirit a thousand years before he was born as a man. And when he walked among us, Jesus had a depth of character that no other person I had read or heard about had.  

In the accounts of him written by those who knew him there did not appear to be a single negative trait in his nature. He had a deep wisdom, an authority and a love about him that was awe inspiring and his message was a spiritual one and not a religious one at all. I didn't see it at the time, but the message of the Bible wasn't that we should be in religious bondage, but that we can have freedom in Christ. However, my lingering misconceptions about religion and spirituality kept me from going much further. I tried to live by the principals that I was learning, but even in sobriety my life spiraled out of control. My understanding wasn't enough and in my third year of sobriety the new woman and children in my life left me, I lost all of my worldly possessions and my heart was split wide open. 

Although both my parents and several others I had been close to had died, I had never allowed myself to experience grief. But now, in sobriety without any anesthetic, my heart was finally broken and I felt the full impact of my losses. I had never dealt with emotional pain without a crutch and was desperate for comfort from my grief. I decided to turn, not to booze, drugs or religion, but to Jesus himself, although I wasn't yet convinced that He would hear me or if what the Bible said about him was really true. I could never have imagined what happened next. In spite of my doubts and much to my surprise Jesus revealed himself to me while I was praying one evening. It all happened in a deeply moving and wonderfully personal way. 

This wasn't buying into a religion to relieve the pain; I wasn't even attending church. It wasn't a hallucination; I had certainly had enough of those through my drug experiences to know one when I saw one. I hadn't tricked my mind into this, simply because it was totally unexpected. My other transcendental experiences had been surreal; this was absolutely real. This was a true spiritual experience, a one on one encounter with the spirit of Jesus Christ. And when I later read that he was close to the brokenhearted I understood clearly what he had meant. 

In a way that I cannot adequately describe, he clearly showed me that I had to be humbled and needed to surrender my love of the things of the world to him if I was to be saved. (I wasn't even sure what saved meant.) My grief turned to joy and every molecule of my being was washed with the most pure and powerful love. As I felt his love flood my soul I could feel my love flow back to Him. He then spoke to me in a soft voice from deep within me and told me that I was to be "...born again." (John 3:3 NIV) In my mind I didn't know what this meant, but on the deeper level of the spirit I knew that I needed it and that I wanted it more than anything in the world.  

Later I read the story of the prodigal son returning home and humbling himself before his father after spending all his money on prostitutes and drinking. After the father welcomed his son home he said "Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." (Luke 15:23-24 NIV) Jesus clearly showed me how I had turned my back on my heavenly father and squandered all that he had given me, and how I had come to love the gifts more than the giver. I saw that even if you don't believe, all good things come from God and that I would have to humble myself before Him and repent and beg his forgiveness, as the prodigal child in the Bible had done. 

Over the next few weeks Jesus led me through the process of coming to sincere repentance. I started to journal all the ways in which I had hurt others and myself. I was brutally honest with myself and realized how much pain I had caused the women in my life; the fear that I had caused my children; the anguish that I had caused my mom and dad and the damage that I had caused society with my crime sprees. I saw clearly how I had harmed so many people and how my sins against others were also against God. He also grieves when he sees the hurt that we inflict on each other.  

I also learned that it was crucially important that I forgive those who had hurt me, and that they hadn't done it from bad intent but because they too were lost. In addition to all of this I came to see that although I considered myself a major league sinner, everyone is guilty and in God's eyes, "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:22-23 NIV) I was no worse than anyone else; but I found no comfort in that. The more clearly I saw the person that I had become, the more my heart ached. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart...." (Psalm 51:17 NIV), and I was finally ready to offer my sacrifice. 

One afternoon while confessing to the Lord and asking for his forgiveness, I read the 51st Psalm, King David's prayer of repentance. My pain immediately turned to Joy as God welcomed home another prodigal son. "...you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." (1Peter 1:8-9 NIV) Although I had not yet read those words, how true they became for me. For quite some time I was in a state of bliss beyond anything I could ever have imagined. In a few short moments all of the answers to the big question became crystal clear. In the words of one of my many friends with whom I share this experience "I knew that I knew that I knew."  

A few weeks later, I read what the Apostle Peter had written, "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty." (2Peter 16 NIV) and I knew without any doubt the truth of his words. What happened wasn't from my mind at all, but from a place much deeper than our imagination can fathom. This transcended everything that I had ever conceived, experienced or read about. I knew beyond any doubt that I had finally come home, to our eternal home and that the source of all love was there. Perhaps this was the mountaintop that Martin Luther King spoke about when he said "I have been to the mountaintop and have seen the promised land", not a land of the visible, but the invisible, eternal home of the spirit. 

This should not be hard to understand, after all isn't everything we see made out of that which is invisible? Isn't everything that is visible to us composed of sub-atomic particles, as our science confirms? Don't we take that on faith? Many leading edge scientists are becoming aware that there is a supreme consciousness veiled behind what we observe without actually seeing. No one has ever seen the sub-atomic particle that scientists call the Quark; but science knows that it is by observing what it does; and so it is with spiritual things. Scientific and spiritual investigation have many similarities and the assumptions of both rely on faith.

In the place where my spirit now dwelled there was absolute peace, absolute joy and absolute love; and I knew in every part of myself that this was spiritual reality; the only lasting reality there is. This was the most valid state of consciousness I had ever known. It was much like awakening from a dream only to realize that what seemed to be real while sleeping wasn't real at all. My whole life had been a dream and now I was awake. Not all Christians wake up so abruptly; however the realization that Jesus is the truth is unmistakable beyond any doubt no matter how he reveals himself to us. Before this revelation I wasn't sure that anything in life was absolute, but thought that reality depended upon how we individually perceived life to create our own truth. 

This may be the case on a superficial conscious level, but we don't have the power to change anything in the unseen world: the deeper level of the spirit. We have to be conformed to the unchangeable spiritual laws; they will not be conformed to our thinking: "...so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." (1Corinthians 2:5 NIV) 

My father was right; we can't with our minds, fathom the depths of the human spirit, let alone the mind of God. We have to by faith, believe what is revealed to us by God himself. Even Jesus knew the limitations of his mind and said that he could do nothing on his own, but only what The Father told him to do. No matter how many dormant brain cells we may utilize, we will never discover the true story of who we are as eternal beings. All we can do is believe it when we hear it from the one who knows. As our thinking is far more complex and superior to the computers we create and our minds beyond the machine's comprehension, so it is with God and us; because they and we are both created things. 

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." (Isaiah 40:28 NIV)

The Bible tells us that God created us for much the same reason that we have children, so that he would have a divine people to share his love with. It shows us how we were led away from him by our selfish choices and how for thousands of years he wove together the most amazing plan to bring us back into an intimate love relationship with him. One man had to live a sinless life so that we could be saved, (restored to relationship with God), through his righteousness because it is impossible for us to become righteous by our own devices.  

The sin of Adam had broken the bond for all of us and the sinless life of Jesus renewed it; and he said that no man could come to God except through him. He didn't say this because he had an ego problem; he said it because he is the only one that God sent for that specific purpose and the proof that Jesus was that man was his resurrection from the dead. The Christian religion didn't invent this idea because of their arrogance; they just repeat it because God said it is true. The Bible is not a man conceived religious book about our spiritual discoveries. It is divine revelation by God himself and the true story of how he reaches out to us through his prophets, and eventually Jesus, to bring us back to him. God is the creator and knows the whole story and tells it to us through his chosen people. And he is the only one with the power to change our basic self-centered human nature. 

Of course, some will say "that's OK for him, but I'll find my own way." There is only one God, one truth and only one way home; the cost was too great to make another. He made it for everyone who wants it; it's free; no strings attached, simply because he still loves us. God lowered himself to our level through his son so that he could better communicate with us and make a way for us to come back into intimate relationship with him. He has spent several thousand years fulfilling his plan to bring us home and the Bible not only tells us the story, but also teaches us everything that is necessary for us to live in peace both here and hereafter. And the essence of what we need is love. Jesus said that to love God and each other was the most important requirement of all. He spoke many times and in many different ways about the importance of love. 

The Bible is essentially a book about love and those who have lived without it will tell you that it's hell on earth. I don't even want to imagine what eternity would be like without it. However, no matter how deprived of love you may have been in this life, Jesus has plenty to spare and is just waiting at the door of your heart to fill you. Jesus' life and death are the ultimate expression of God's love for us; and the resurrection is the proof that only the most powerful being in the universe can provide. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16 NIV) God's love is free and all we have to do is choose to accept it.

We all choose what we believe and we all have to live with the consequences of our decisions, whether they are wise or foolish. We are divine and eternal beings and will either suffer or rejoice for eternity because of the choices we make in this life. To believe or not to believe is the ultimate question and the decision is the most important one that anyone will ever have to make. Salvation is a gift and we can either accept it or reject it and the consequences are eternal; so what choice do we really have? If we reject it, we condemn ourselves to eternity separated from the love of our father. It's our choice; he gave his children the freedom to choose.  

"For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believes in him is not condemned: but he that does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God." (John 3:17-18 NKJ)  

Many are satisfied with the peace the world has to offer, but "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36 NIV) 

Thank you and God bless you for taking the time to read my testimony. I pray that it has helped encourage you in some way. If you would like to talk with me about anything I've shared, please don't hesitate to contact me.  

Stanley J. Borley

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Remember:  All that we do in this life comes back to our God-given purpose which is to serve and glorify God. The money and assets we accumulate, the fame and power we've attained or seek to attain - all of the things of this nature will one day pass away, but those lives of others we impact for Jesus Christ will last for eternity, and we will be rewarded for the part we helped play by impacting those lives ... for eternity. (Matthew 6:19-21 is our assurance)