Let It Be Known

It was a day when the threat of rain hung in the air. A young woman drove up to a drive-through fast-food window. She was waited on by a man wearing a turban. As he handed the woman her order through the car window, he said, with a trace of an Indian accent, “Ah, the smell of eternity is in the air.” The woman was impressed, assuming that the mystical words were offered as a profound philosophical observation. Was it a prophetic statement, meaning “The end is near”? she wondered. She smiled politely and said nothing. But the man continued to speak. “Eternity,” he repeated. “Are you wearing ‘Eternity’ cologne?”

Reading the Gospels, we quickly discover that, for Jesus, “eternity” is always in the air. In John’s Gospel alone, Jesus makes no less than fifteen references to eternal life. Among them:

The Son of Man must be lifted up …
o that everyone who believes may have
eternal life in him” (Jn. 3:15).