ARTICLE – 20 Mar 2016

A recent 2015 movie, “Room”, tells the story of a boy, Jack, and his mother who are trapped in a room for the first six years of Jack’s life, before they finally escape to the outside world. Because Jack has lived his entire life inside the room, that room is all he knows. When they escape, Jack sees the blue skies, trees, a dog, for the first time, and all these things are new and remarkable to him. The audience knows that although Jack and his mother were alive before, in the room, that was a poor shadow of existence. Now, they experience life as it ought to be lived in the outside world.

This movie is a wonderful analogy for Apostle Paul’s description of this world as a temporary tent, and that we would be “further clothed… so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life”. Our lives in this world are like Jack in that room: a very superficial form of living. True life, to be lived eternally with God, is like the outside world that Jack didn’t know anything about.

At one point in the movie, Jack became homesick for the room. But the audience knows better: the world outside is so much more wonderful than that room. In fact, we are shocked that Jack would even want to go back. But Jack didn’t know what life was like outside. In the same way, because we don’t know what life is like in heaven, we may long for what we’re familiar with – this world – even though there is something better in store for us.

But we can trust that God knows better than us. This is comforting because God’s unchanging character means that He is eternally faithful. What He says, He will definitely bring to pass. Therefore, we can be certain that beyond this decaying and dying world, we will live as God intended for us. That life will be far more glorious and eternally more satisfying and fascinating, beyond anything we can imagine now. That’s definitely something we all can look forward to!