Best-selling author John Eldridge writes that his wife Stasi always reads the end of a novel first.  She tells him, “A story is only as good as its ending.” 
        This is why we followers of the resurrected Jesus can have the best view of life.  The story of a life is only as good as its ending.  Not knowing what comes after death or not having a sure hope of life after death can certainly put a damper on life itself.  After all, how could you enjoy a picnic if you knew you’d get drenched in a downpour before it’s over?  How could you enjoy a vacation if you knew you were going to have a serious accident on the way home?
        The fact that we’re going to live in God’s heaven forever with Him and enjoy His awesome universe for an eternity certainly puts a different perspective on our few short years on earth in this life.  People who don’t have any life to live but this one certainly can be excused for making high demands of this life, because it’s all they have.  However, those of us who have the eternal perspective are different.
        Francis de Sales (1567-1622) wrote, “We will soon be in eternity, and then we will see how all the affairs of this world are such little things and how little it matters whether they turn out or not.  At this time, nevertheless, we apply ourselves to them as if they were great things.  When we were little children, with what eagerness did we put together little bits of tile, wood, and mud to make houses and small buildings.  And if someone destroyed them, we were very grieved and tearful at it; but now we know well that it all mattered very little.  One day it will be the same with us in Heaven, when we will see that our concerns in this world were truly only child’s play.”
        “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.”  Ecclesiastes 3:11