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What a climax: "Goodness and mercy all the days of my life;"
and "dwell in the house of the Lord, forever." For the Christian,
that is life's fulfillment.
But so few of us really grasp the full meaning of life. The
governor of Tennessee tells about a letter from a prisoner
recently received:

"Dear Governor,
I want to talk with you about my future.
I am to be electrocuted on Friday,
And here it is Wednesday.
Your friend --

One of us might address God:

O God,
I want to talk to you about my future.
I am going to run out of life one of these
days and here I am 80 years old.
Your friend --

But here we are, all mixed up as to life's real meaning:

"In a day of illusions
And utter confusions
Upon our delusions
We base our conclusions."

God help us. We try to air-condition hell, instead of finding the
true meaning of life. Really, what is the score? Leslie

Weatherhead gives us a parable: There is an imaginary ship
cruising in mid-ocean. The captain called the passengers together
and announced:

"We are not going to put into port. We have food; we have music.
We will continue our cruise with dancing and singing until our
fuel is exhausted, and then sink the ship."

How stupid can you get? But many of us are doing just that. We
are preoccupied with the present moment -- with our money-making
and our dancing. We have no awareness of destiny. Without
thinking, we have made up our minds to ride the ship until the
fuel runs out, and let her sink. Thomas Merton is right, "Our
problem is desire -- not great desire, but low desire." Life has
no grand mystique. Youth is caught up in "frenzied pleasure-
seeking." Too many are filling their emptiness with alcohol,
drugs and careless sex.
And the result? Emil Brunner answers, "All (these) paths lead
into the grave. This is the fearful geography of life." Paul
Tillich goes a step farther, "Who can look at this picture? Only
those who look at another picture beyond this picture." And that
picture is the picture of God's love on the cross, and the
picture of death defeated by the resurrection.
We can't accept the theme of a recent author: "The deepening
twilight moves across the lovely sweep of the earth. This and
only this is all, there is no more." No! We have a choice. "We
must make up our minds," suggests Rufus Jones. "Are we going to
live in a one-story universe or a two-story universe?" Does not
the ultimate end of life give meaning to the present? As Bob
Dylan sings it: "He not busy being born is busy dying."
There is the story about a submarine, badly damaged by a depth
charge, and lying on the bottom of the ocean. In trying to
surface the craft, the captain organized two groups: one, to work
night and day on surfacing; two, to carry on life, meantime,
food, recreation and housekeeping. The second group says to group
number one, "Why waste time trying to

surface? This is life. You are missing out on it." The captain
had to speak, "Up there is true life. We live here, temporarily,
so we can live there, permanently." The captain speaks to us:
"Life, real life, is up there where God is." That is the goal;
this is only temporary.
Let's get our bearings. We take soundings. How deep is our
ocean? Where is our port? What is really up there on the surface
with God? The soul's radar picks up a dim message:

"Surely goodness and mercy
Shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I shall dwell
in the house of the Lord forever."

Our radar constantly searches all horizons. There is a persistent
blip. It may be blurred, but it is there. It won't go away. It
beckons. By faith we follow. God doesn't spell it out too easily.
Life can be fearful. But I won't give up. I feel in my bones the
expectation of some great thing: "The house of the Lord,
forever."
Intelligent as we are, it is so easy for us human beings to
get fatally trapped. Just the other day, an insect flew through
my study window. I said you won't like this. You will be trapped
away from the sun, the flowers and nature. Confidently (by his
actions), the insect answered back: "You are wrong. It's bright
and warm in here, and I smell something intriguing. I can go back
when I wish." He stayed. The next morning he was dead. Should not
several million years of evolution have carried us a little
further along the road of wise action?
Harold Bosley told of a little girl visiting in the home of
friends. She was crying like her heart would break. When her
hostess asked, "Honey, are you homesick?" She whimpered, "No,
ma'am, I'm here sick." In our holding on to a one dimensional
world, we are "here sick," hungry for the full expression of our
powers, hungry to know that we are in a continuing stream of
life, that leads somewhere.
Now let's move to the eternal reality: "the goodness and
mercy;" "the house of the Lord forever." This life is tied to

the next life; the next life is tied to this life. A young mother
advises her growing child: "Live each day in an awareness of your
relationship to a real God, who knows you and is working with
you. Seek in everything to obey him, and seek to accomplish what
he calls you to." Our obedience to God and our support from God
is practical and continuous. It is lived out in personal life, in
work and in leisure, in corporate and professional life, and most
of all in all relationships with others.
Just now I am having counseling sessions with a very depressed
woman in our church. She is worrying and afraid; she is making
herself physically sick. She is in and out of the hospital and
under partial psychiatric care. I have reminded her that Jesus
said, "My peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not
as the world giveth give I unto you, let not your heart be
troubled neither let it be afraid (John 14:27)." I have tried to
help her receive this gift of peace as a sheer gift from Christ.
Just breathe in this quiet mysterious gift of peace. Just receive
it and begin thanking God for it every moment you receive it
until it becomes a life habit of trust and joy, and depression
fades away. I saw her yesterday and I could see the depression
fading and the lines of trust and peace beginning to be written
into her face.
We learn to turn threats and fears, sickness and problems over
to him. We feel the burden lifted. We realize God is working at
it, that he knows the situation, that he can handle it, that he
will handle it. A new trust has been born in our subconscious
minds. And we move toward wholeness. And we are deeply assured
that he can even handle death; and there will be a beautiful
sunrise in a totally new universe of life. As one of my members
spoke to me on his death-bed, "In my funeral tell them that I
said: 'My life has had just enough clouds to make a beautiful
sunset.' " "Goodness and mercy" in spite of tragedy; always help
at the pressure-points of life. We live each day in this relaxed
strength of trust, assurance and thankfulness. And we know down
deep that everything is all right. And we expect more and more
until the task is done, and our work is over, and he calls us
home. After the "goodness and mercy," the "house of the Lord
forever."

All our lives we've been operating in the house of the Lord.
My father is gone, but he is in God. I am alive, but I am in God.
We are both alive in God at different levels of experience. God
is not condoning all our selfishness and stubbornness, but he is
forgiving as we repent. If I am obeying as I understand and
seeking to grow, God is forgiving things I honestly miss and
instructing me in my failures. The goodness and the mercy follow
me. This goes on into the eternal.
Now where does faith come in? Commitment which is made
possible through trust opens the door to realized experience and
assurance. Jesus asked, "When the Son of Man cometh, will he find
faith on earth?" If not we are lost; in faith we see the way, a
step at a time. God draws us out, little by little. He gives us
footprints in the distance, a lantern in the darkness, a door set
open before us. God wants us to be born a little every day. This
is exploring the goodness and the mercy. We share the goodness
and the mercy all the days of our lives, period! And then by the
grace of God we leap over the wall -- "The house of the Lord
forever." When one discovers the goodness and the mercy, he will
come face to face with the forever. When we are headed toward the
kingdom of God, we can see it.
As George Santayana reminded us: "Whoever it was who searched
the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have
found the human mind if he had searched the human brain with a
microscope." But God is there -- the goodness and the mercy -- and
you see him by faith.
Once flying back over the Alps from Yugoslavia to Frankfort,
Germany, our plane felt its way down cloud canyons through
"mystical halls of air." Guided by instruments, piercing misty
curtain after misty curtain, we came at last safely to our
destination. Guided through life by faith, piercing curtains,
coming from the unkonwn to the known, from the unseen to the
seen, through joys and through sorrows, over-shadowed by the
goodness and mercy, we come at last through the final curtain and
burst in upon eternal day. The sun rises never to set again. The
Psalmist had lived under the goodness

and the mercy all the days of his life. But then he ran out of
days; he ran head-on into a wall, the end of things. Then by the
power of God, he leaps over the wall and takes up life again on
the other side: "and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord,
forever." This is the total experience of life.
We are not to be afraid of death. Here the "walls" and the
"ceilings" of life melt away, the horizons are pushed back, the
wonderful light engulfs everything; and we are in God's house.
Paul Scherer says it: "Death is no longer the end; God is the
end!" It all looks different when we look at God, and not at
death. His goodness and mercy flows from this life into the next
life. With God the limits are removed -- "And I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord forever."
Our prioneer fathers who traveled west had nothing to go on
except the tales of those survivors who had gone before. It was
enough. They dared to go, discovering and building as they went,
and behold, a new world was born.
The deep realities are seen by persons of faith. An old Rabbi
was dying. His friends were listening: "I can see no walls, no
ceiling. I can only see the life of everything and God creating
everything and making everything live." "There is always a great
city at the end of a great highway." We are always graduating.
First from kindergarten to grammar school, then from grammar
school to junior high, and junior to senior high, then we are
graduated to college. From college we graduate into life and our
work, from work we finally retire into a more relaxed base of
creativity. From retirement we graduate into heaven (if we love
and trust the Giver of Life).
But so many of us have lost respect for life, have sold it
cheap, have thrown it away, because we have no clear vision of
our ultimate destiny at the end of the road. C. S. Lewis speaks
to us sharply: "Only since Christians have ceased to think of the
other world have they become so ineffective in this." Only by
seeing life whole with a great faith can we "fuel the engine for
dynamic Christian action and mission in the world." "The
Christian is one whose death is already behind him." He knows it
and always lives in expectation of the next step and the next
great experience.

What do people really live for? --

To know the roots of knowledge --
To heal the hearts of men --
To find the source of being --
To discover the foundations of life's meaning --
To pierce the mystery of life --
To hear the beginning and the end of great music --
To glimpse the city of God --
To explore the majesty of creation --
To grasp the day of peace --
To see the fulfillment of love --

Can you accomplish all this in 80 years of physical life? No!
There is another chapter for which this chapter is being written.
"Christ has brought life and immortality to light." One who
has memory and hope, must have perspective or he dies. What is
the whole picture? Now walk with me by faith and we shall see:

We cross the plains,
We scale the hills.

The mountain wall looms dark; impassable,
But then, a piercing shaft of light at sunset,
A pass unseen before,
Suggest a land of glorious brightness!

A Trail,
Some drops of blood and sweat,
A cross, so lovely, standing by --
Up, up; and in the pass an empty tomb!

Now, unafraid to tread
Where Christ has led,
We step at last,
From night to day!

It's not a bribe -- "It's just where the road leads to."

Roy Smith draws the final picture:

The Psalmist is old
The curtain is being drawn
The lights are going down
The sheepfold is closed
The sheep are asleep
And across the ages
A song of hope is heard:
The Lord is my shepherd
The green pastures and the still waters
The paths of Righteousness
He restoreth my soul
The Valley of the Shadow
Thou art with me
Thy table before me
My cup runneth over
The goodness and mercy
The House of the Lord, Forever.
Amen