Eternity is a long time. What will Christians do for all that time? Won’t we eventually run out of things to do, things to discover and things to invent? Eternity stretches out before our imagination and leaves us baffled by its magnitude. From our perspective in this brief life we cannot understand how we will find pleasure that will remain for eternity. What is to keep eternal bliss from becoming eternal boredom?

The Bible says almost nothing about the eternal state. When the Bible speaks of what happens to believers after death it speaks about their condition in between physical death and eternal life. The joys of heaven and the blessings of the kingdom do not necessarily describe the Christian’s actions during eternity. When a believer dies his spirit enters into heaven where it rests and worships God. At the rapture the body of the Christian will be resurrected and made perfect. The glorified body will be united with the soul of the deceased. When Jesus returns to the earth to establish His kingdom all the saints, the living and the resurrected, will reside on the earth with Him for one thousand years At the end of Jesus’ one thousand year reign God will destroy this earth and create a new one.

The creation of the new heaven and new earth will begin eternity. On that new earth will be a wonderful city called the New Jerusalem. Revelation 21 describes the splendor of that city. The last four verses of Revelation 21 and the first five verses of Revelation 22 are the only verses in all the Bible which tell of the saved one’s actions in eternity. The multitudes of redeemed will come to the New Jerusalem bringing to God their glory and honor of Him. All the saved will serve God and reign with Him forever. The Bible provides no specifics about what this service and rule will look like. Whatever form it takes, the saved will be actively working for the Lord for all eternity.

One of the hardest things about trying to imagine eternity is the complete inability of our minds to comprehend the joys awaiting. What color is the smell of perfume? What does a C-sharp look like? Our perceptions are very limited. The eternal delights are much like color to one who has never seen or sound to one who has never heard. Eternity’s joy is invisible to our current desires. We can only imagine what the delights of heaven will be like. Even then our imagination is likely to be very wrong. Only in heaven will we be able to fully appreciate them the pleasures at God’s right hand. (Psalm 16:11)

The joys of God are infinite and never to be exhausted. One of the losses of sin is our sense of wonder. The hallmark of sin is it quickly grows wearisome and the sinner must seek more excitement. Sin is never satisfied or satisfying. Those things which are Godly pleasures are satisfying and ever delightful. In heaven the joy given to us will be ever fresh and eternally satisfying.