Life is an amazing thing. The mortal life that we share with the animals and plants around us constantly reminds us of our holy creator. The perfect balance so often found in the interconnection between many forms of life is simply divine. The tiniest disruption can wreak havoc among any number of species. This mortal life comes and goes for each living thing, with definite beginning and definite end.

Even more amazing than this mortal life, is the immortal life given to us by God. This immortal life also has a definite beginning, at conception, when our souls are created along with our bodies. But our immortal lives have no end.

We can clearly comprehend mortal life. We can see our bodies, we can feel with them, we can experience with them. We watch new life come into the world, and we also see life leave the world. The immortal life is an entirely different matter, but very important to understand. Our souls give life to our bodies. At death, our bodies and souls become separated, and all that is left is our souls. It is the state of our souls which will determine our state in the afterlife. This is not only important, it is eternal. So what about these souls? What do they do for us?

Our souls possess the spiritual powers of intellect and will. Intellect is our ability to think and understand, while our wills gives us the power to choose. We make decisions with our wills, and we love with our wills. We do this based upon what we know with our intellect. The intellect and the will work closely together. For the more we know a person, the more we are able to love them. The more that we come to know God, the more that we can love Him.

Of course as Christians, we know that the separation of our bodies and souls is only temporary. At some time unknown to us all when the world comes to an end, our bodies and souls will be reunited. Our bodies are necessary so that we can experience either pleasure or pain, as determined by the choices that we have made with our wills.

If we choose hell – and that’s exactly what hell is, a choice – we will experience a terrible sense of loss. We will come to fully understand the ramifications of the choices we have made – of the many times that we had the opportunity to repent, but failed – and we will have no further opportunity to choose. We will be eternally separated from God.

If we choose heaven, we will experience the inexplicable joy of being reunited with our Father. We can rejoice that we chose to use God’s grace to help us to do His will – sacrificing and avoiding temporary worldly pleasures – for the love and for the greater glory of God.

Though our lives on Earth may seem long to us, when measured alongside eternity they are here and gone in the blink of an eye. The choices that we make everyday can have enormous consequences. Only by the grace of God do we have a chance to get it right.