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Johannes 6:47 (HTB)
“Listen carefully: whoever believes in Me has eternal life.”

LECTIO

I paraphrase this in my own words: Eternal life is not a distant promise reserved for after death. It is a present reality. Whoever believes — whoever truly trusts and follows — already possesses this life. It has begun. The verb tense matters: has, not will have.

MEDITATIO

I am still wrestling with my old patterns. More than ever, because after my baptism a world opened up for me. A world full of clarity, momentum, knowledge, insight — and questions. Many questions about myself. Because the more I come to know our Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, the more I feel addressed, triggered, fallible, with potential to become better.

Those deep valleys are finite, and then I climb again. But climbing costs effort and patience.

One of the many questions occupying me is: What is eternal life? And if eternal life lies ahead of us, shouldn’t that positively change my mentality? Why should I, for example, worry about ever finding a beloved partner, when I will soon have an eternity to discover that? Don’t I first have other, greater priorities: serving God, following Jesus in His footsteps, fulfilling my obligations to myself and my children? And whatever comes after that — we’ll see.

Perhaps I articulate this nonchalantly and simplistically. But it is also a rhetorical question for myself.

Eternal life as our future — shouldn’t that do something to us?

ORATIO

Lord, I confess that I often use theology as a shield. When the pain of aloneness becomes too much, I reach for Scripture to prove that the pain shouldn’t exist. “I have eternity, so I shouldn’t feel this emptiness now.”

Forgive me when I bypass my humanity. You did not bypass Yours. You wept at Lazarus’s grave, even though You knew the resurrection and the eternity that waited.

Teach me to hold both: the eternal life I now possess, and the human longing for connection that I still carry. Let one inform the other, not cancel it out.

CONTEMPLATIO

[Silence. Resting in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” No resolution needed. Only presence.]

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