Perfect Health

Daily writing prompt

If you had to describe your ideal life, what would it look like?

View all responses

To answer this one, I could enter the world of fantasy. Let’s suppose I got to heaven, and someone granted me a wish. We’ll undoubtedly worship God in heaven collectively, because the New Testament presents that picture in the book of Revelation, but it also describes a new creation where everything is perfect. That’s not fantasy, but just for fun, let me speak of my wish. I’d like to be able to travel back in time to my life in this world, teleport in space and time and either have everything perfect or have the ability to change things as I see fit.

But maybe everything will be so different and better then that we’ll just want to move on and forget about our past lives in this world.

So let’s be a little more realistic and consider my ideal life in this world. I never had major health problems, but like most people, I’m troubled by minor problems. I think in terms of physical, mental, and spiritual health. And you could also include issues with finances, career, and relationships. I’d like everything to be perfect fine 😀.

I’ve travelled to various regions around Europe. I particularly enjoy the UK, which is similar to Ireland, but feels more exotic to me. I often see homes or cities where I’d like to live. I often feel that way about Cambridge. That would be part of my ideal life.

I’d like to be a Professor of Physics at Cambridge or maybe the Pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. In my circles, we greatly admired Martyn Lloyd Jones, who ministered there in the mid-20th Century.

Lloyd Jones passed away in 1981. I never met him, but I did meet his successor, R.T. Kendall. Not everyone was pleased with Kendall because they felt that he engaged too much with the wacky side of evangelicalism, but I used to enjoy attending his Bible studies and reading his books. I still watch him on Facebook.

Anyway, what I should be most concerned with is my spiritual health. I am already saved and safe. The Bible assures us that once we repent and believe, we are adopted into God’s family. But when that happens, we want to be like our Father and His Son, Jesus, who is both God and Man. As man, we can consider Him our friend, our brother, and our example. And He reminded us of the two greatest commandments:

Matthew 22:37-40
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I’d like to sail through life without any problems, but God has his purposes in presenting us with challenges. Maybe when we get to heaven, we’ll have a greater understanding of why God allows trouble to come our way. Or maybe not. In the book of Job in the Old Testament, Job went through great troubles. Things worked out in the end, but he never discovered why God allowed it all to happen. The strange thing was that God allowed Satan to afflict him. And the same thing can be said about the crucifixion. It was all in God’s purposes. This is emphasized in the book of Acts:

Here’s what Peter said in his speech on the day of Pentecost:

Acts 2:22-24
²² “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. ²³ This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. ²⁴ But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

And soon after, following the first persecution of the apostles, here’s what was said during a prayer meeting:

Acts 4:27-28
²⁷ Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. ²⁸ They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

It was a great comfort for them to know that God was shaping it all. And it’s a comfort to me to know that God allows me to face challenges for His own purposes. But I pray that he’ll help me to deal with them, and I see no harm in praying that I’ll be utterly free of them, even in this life. I often mention that both Jesus and Paul made requests that weren’t granted. But both we happy to leave it in the hands of their Father. And if we did fully understand God’s purposes, we might consider the very life that we live as ideal. We should prefer to live a sinless life, but maybe knowing how much God loved us, despite our sin, will help us to show greater love for God for all eternity.