Recently, I brought my father to a medical centre to make his Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) and Advance Care Plan (ACP). My mother had recently made hers and encouraged him to do so as well, given that he is quite advanced in years and had suffered a stroke about three years ago.

While it was a difficult and heavy topic to broach and talk about, I thought the trained ACP facilitator was professional and skilful in guiding him through the conversation. In the quiet but weighty stillness of the room, I saw my father’s visible grief in his eyes as he faced and prepared for his own eventual departure from this world.

There and then, I quietly prayed that this conversation would cause him to reconsider his belief in the afterlife and lead to opportunities for deeper conversations about faith.

I wasn’t born into a Christian family, but through the years, Christ’s gospel had graciously and powerfully moved in my family, saving my mother, my two sisters, and me. Even my maternal grandmother and many of my maternal uncles and aunts came to hear the gospel and placed their trust in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Yet my father remained unconvinced, firmly holding to the belief that this earthly life is all there is—that when the physical body dies, existence simply ends, like a flame that has been extinguished.

Such a modern view actually goes against the grain of much of the history of humanity. Through the most part of history, prevalent across all civilisations, humans have always believed in the continuation of existence after death—the Sumerians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Incas, just to name a few—and prepared for it as best as they could. Despite being divided by time and geography, language and culture, this common belief tells us that in all of us, there is a longing for eternity and for things that go beyond this life which are greater than what we can perceive and possess here in this life.

C.S. Lewis elegantly captures this longing in his classic book titled Mere Christianity (p. 135-137), “Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Lewis continues, “Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.”

These words are a powerful reminder to us to fix our eyes upon Jesus in this earthly race, to look to Christ as our ultimate prize and press on toward him (Phi. 3:14).

The greater challenge I find is not in the negative things that happened in my life—they caused me to run to Christ; the greater challenge is in mistaking the good things for the ultimate thing—and turn aside in pursuit of them. It is only when I am clear-eyed about this will I be able to run the race in such a way as to win the prize; and it is only then can I help and encourage others to do the same.

This necessarily means living in a way that is countercultural to the world and is perplexing to those who do not yet know Christ or has not come to know him as the ultimate prize.

After all, why live in a way which forgoes the tangible and graspable benefits of the here and now to gain that which is distant, veiled, and seems uncertain?

But once Christ opened our eyes to “the other country”, expanded our vision beyond this earthly life—we know it is the right way to live. And how we live becomes our witness; when those in our lives see the manner of our lives, their vision of life is expanded, and they can catch glimpses of “the true country” they can be a part of as well.

Over the Chinese New Year, my believing aunt calmly and confidently talked about her eventual departure as we sat down for a meal. She had undergone a major heart surgery about ten years ago to replace her heart valves, and they are beginning to fail again. Due to her advance age, she had opted not to go for another operation but is ready to go home to be with her Lord.

I can sense that she is much more prepared than my father in this matter—his uneasiness over the subject continued to show his sense of uncertainty and grief. What a blessing those who are in Christ have! He has taken the sting out of death (1 Cor. 15:56) and is present with us when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps. 23)!

May we who have received his blessing become a blessing to others (Gen. 12:1-3). I continue to pray for my father, that his heart will be open to the gospel, to coming with us to church, and to receiving Christ into his life.