Ant-on-line

Living in Paradise August 5, 2007

I’m actually living on Paradise Rd, not in paradise.  I just like catchy titles.

Today, with lots of help from my dad, I moved back to Hamilton in my new place [17 Paradise Rd, Unit 2].  My room is good.  It’s small, but I’m used to having small rooms in the past four years.

Hmm…paradise.

Paradise (noun): a place of extreme beauty, delight, or happiness.

That’s one of the definitions I pulled up from dictionary.com.  Often paradise is synonymous with heaven.  I remember having a conversation with Rony last week about “The Gospel” and he asked me, “Anton, would you still want to go to heaven if God wasn’t there?“

We had been talking about reasons why people want to go to heaven, or maybe why they want accept Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour.  Is it to get to heaven?  Yes, those who accept Christ as their Lord and Saviour do go to heaven.  But heaven is not the end.  God is.  Jesus is.  When you become a Christian, you get God.  You are back where you were meant to be – in a relationship with God.

“No,” is my answer.  I desire Christ above all and if Christ weren’t in heaven, then I wouldn’t go.  But as the Psalmist says, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there.”  And that’s were I want to be.  The even greater thing is this: you don’t have to wait till then because “Christ may dwell in you hearts through faith” [ephesians 4:17] and “because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” [hebrews 13:5]

Referring back to the definition of paradise, a place of extreme beauty, delight, and happiness.  I see that in God.  I delight to know Christ and true joy and happiness is found in Christ, Christ alone.  May you come to know him too.  That is my prayer for you.