Can nothing can be better?

Not long ago Steve Sabol, son of Ed Sabol and co-founder of NFL Films, passed away from a brain tumor. He was 70, and still way too young. At NFL films, he was a film maker, a camera man and an editor and writer and an on-screen commentator. His entire professional career was spent capturing, preserving and presenting football to the public in new and different ways. Football fans owe him a debt, and not just for Football Follies.

A specific quote that made the rounds after his death saddened me. Mr. Sabol said:

"So they talk about heaven, and I don't know what is waiting for me up there. But I can tell you this: Nothing will happen up there that can duplicate my life down here. Nothing. That life cannot be better than the one I've lived down here, the football life. It's been perfect."

Of course, I don't know his religious beliefs or the entire context of his statement. I can understand the joy of spending his life getting paid for doing what he loved. What boggles my mind is that he couldn't conceive that an eternity in heaven spent with a loving, awesome God could be any better in than the life he'd lived, here.

That's something I once found difficult to conceive. But then, I'm a baby boomer, raised in a Christian home by parents who'd sooner question the law of gravity than the existance of God.

How desperately our world needs us to live in the world, loving one another yet without compromising the Word of God.

Our perception of the world—the point of view, the glasses through which we view our world—is vitally important. Is my existance an accident of evolution? Or, was I conceived first in the heart of God? Is there anything after this life?

We all have questions, and many of them have difficult answers. A Christian's life isn't based on blind faith, but faith based on the living Word of God and on what we know is true. I've experienced His love and comfort and have seen the healing of twisted limbs with my own eyes. God loves us, and gave himself for us.

We were made for fellowship with God. Proverbs 8:17 says those who seek me diligently will find me. Him. Not a bunch of rules or even just knowledge about God. He promises us a love relationship not just on earth, but for eternity. 1 Corinthians 2:9:

For it is written:

  "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
  Nor have entered into the heart of man
  the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."