We live in a paradoxical world. There’s always a constant fight between two different natures—not only in our soul, but also in reality itself. The world looks good and bad at the same time. Love and hatred seem to be almost always bound together. The same lioness who so tenderly protect her cubs has no scruples about mercilessly tearing apart and devouring the poor deer that’s innocently living its peaceful life. It’s not only that. It seems that cruelty and suffering are unavoidable. If the lioness doesn’t kill the deer, she dies in suffering and hunger. If she kills it, then the deer dies in suffering and despair. What a harsh and paradoxical reality!

This strange blend of love and hatred is not all that occurs in nature. Pleasure and pain, loss and gain also seem to be present in all we do. The pleasure of eating tasty food doesn’t come without the time spent to prepare it or the money to buy it, and it also cannot be fully enjoyed without the pang of hunger. The greater the hunger, the tastier the food. Opening ourselves to love is also opening ourselves to getting hurt if that love fails. And as humans, we’re always failing, so love is always hurting. We can’t get stronger without the pain of lifting weights. We can’t be successful without facing the pain of failure a few dozen of times. To master pain and learn to make the best of it is the only way to attain something, to get somewhere in this world.

And there is even more in reality that confounds us. There are things we feel and face that can’t be expressed in words. Language is feeble and imperfect to such an extent that at some moments it cannot describe everything. There are things we wish to share with others in the same measure we feel, either of extreme pain or extreme joy. But we cannot convey them because language fails us. And therefore, we’re condemned to guard some things only for ourselves and carry them inside of ourselves for a long period—no matter how heavy or cumbersome they are.

Thankfully we have the Godhead, whereby the Spirit can percolate our souls and understand what we can’t express in words, Christ can empathize with us in our pains and carry it together—and the Father can accept and love us when we feel in our hearts that no one else can anymore. In joyful moments, we can also laugh with them about what we know that no one else would understand. Yet although this relationship gives us peace and strength to keep going, we still face the problem of language—even in our relationship with Divinity.

When recognizing her incapability of worshipping God as fully as she would like, Ellen G. White fervently expressed, “Oh, that I had an immortal tongue, that I could praise Him as I desire!”—Testimonies for the Church, vol. 2, p. 593.

No matter whether we like it or not, this is what we have. This is our reality. And it’s interesting that we consider ourselves to be such creative beings when in fact the only thing we can do is take something that is already there and reshape it in a different way. We can’t create something new out of nothing. We can imagine unicorns. But we can do this only because we know horses and horns. Our imagination cannot reach what it has never tasted. The experience of what immortality will be is beyond our minds, no matter how we try to contemplate it. The best we can imagine is a better version of earth and ourselves.

Our mind cannot fathom a reality where pain is separated from pleasure. In fact, that would even look boring. We can’t have a pleasurable night of sleep if we’re not tired. Tiredness makes the pleasure of resting to be better. When we try to create environments where there’s no loss—only gain—things don’t work. This we can see in spoiled children: they have everything without having to put forth any effort or self-denial (pain)—and instead of being extremely happy, nothing is ever good enough for them. That’s the way things work in this sinful reality. No pain, no gain.

The problem with imagining only a better version of all things is that it isn’t a true picture. And since we’re moved by pictures and not by concepts, a wrong picture will move us to the wrong place—even unconsciously, as we can’t imagine it.

That’s why Christ described the kingdom of heaven in parables, not in concepts or definitions. That’s why our moral code is a person (Christ), not a code of rules. Let’s clarify: That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t follow the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. We should and that’s clear in the Bible. But their purpose is to be a lens through which we can get an accurate picture of Christ, our model.

When we read poetry, or appreciate art, or listen to classical music and so on . . . there are special rules to be followed to help us appreciate what has been designed for a good purpose. Why does Alvaro Siviero cry every time he listens to Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto n°2, but we don’t? Because he knows deeply in his heart the rules to listen to in order to derive the full appreciation of it—but we don’t. The same is with Christ and the law. The law is the set of rules through which we can rightly see and fully enjoy the picture of Christ.

Many are stuck in the thought that heaven will somehow be boring. We are tempted to think: “I had better enjoy things here on earth because I’ll not have them in heaven.” For us as youth, the biggest of those thoughts is about marriage. I was counseling a friend who was planning to do a crazy thing in order to see her boyfriend and she reasoned, “Well, COVID is here. Jesus is coming. So, I had better get married.” That wrong picture of heaven made her hurry—not for the coming of Christ, but her marriage. Many of us, youth, do the same in many things. For example, we want to travel and enjoy life in all its adventures now because we figure that we won’t have this chance in heaven. But instead, we should picture heaven correctly. Otherwise even immortality loses its appeal.

We have arrived, then, at an apparently unsolvable paradox. We can’t picture eternity correctly because our eyes can see only through the lens of our ephemeral reality, as we can long only for the pictures we see. We can’t seem to yearn as we should for eternity, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). If our heart longs for earthly things, then here’s our treasure and here we’ll end our days in mortality. Immortality, on the other hand, is for those who have their heart in eternity. So, how can we get out of this rut?

“The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17). If we can’t see with our own lens, we need a new lens.

Sadly, nowadays the biggest focus of sermons and studies appears to be on justification. “How can I be justified towards God?” That on which we focus, debate, and preach. Because of the intense emphasis on this, faith is automatically linked in our minds with justification only. “We’re justified by faith.” That, in fact, is truth. But only half of the truth. We LIVE by faith. That’s more. That doesn’t merely mean that faith gives us life in order for us to live. But it means also that our modus operandi—the way we live, act, plan, behave, and see life is by faith and through faith. Not by sight.

What is faith? “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). That’s faith: It is the conviction of something we cannot picture with our eyes nor with our mind. And it is not only conviction, but actual assurance. It is substance. It is assurance that what we hope for (our unfulfilled longings) will be fulfilled, even when we don’t know or understand how. That’s faith—and in this way, we not only believe; we live. How come?

Faith is a new sense, a new lens through which we can see and live a new reality that is yet to come. Faith opens the eyes of our heart to see the future glory of our inheritance and have a little taste of it (Ephesians 1:18). In other words, faith sanctifies our imagination in order that through it we can see the kingdom of heaven made real. That, of course, is not by us, but a gift from God only for those who accept to be part of the kingdom. That enlightenment is made by the Holy Spirit. Through Him we can picture eternity, even if our reasoning cannot. In Ephesians 2:8, Paul makes clear that faith is a gift to those whom he is addressing in his letter. He opens this epistle by saying that it is addressed to the saints, those who have accepted the calling of the kingdom and are set apart from the kingdoms of this world.

We cannot imagine pleasure separated from pain. But that’s what the Bible says. It will be eternity, and through faith we believe and rest in it (Revelation 21:4). We do not readily relate to a world where there’s no evil to be fought, no victory without loss. But that’s what the Bible says it will be in eternity. And in this, through faith, we believe and rest.

We’re always fighting against time. Always trying to decide what is the best way to use it because time is short. In eternity, we’ll not have this problem. There will be time to do everything, without any loss. How can that be? Our mind cannot fathom this. But through faith we believe and rest in it.

In heaven, language will be perfect. The whole experience of our life, our inner struggles that no one can see nor understand, the things that have shaped our character cannot be transmitted by feeble language will finally be possible to communicate in heaven. And all that only in one name (Revelation 2:17)! We will have words to express everything we feel and want, either of joy or sorrow. We’ll have an immortal tongue, like Sister White, in finally fulfilling the intense desire to praise and worship the Lord in the intensity and fullness of how great He is!

Have you ever stopped to think of how amazingly awesome that seems? How impossible it looks? That’s what awaits us in eternity. It’s not simply a better version of our reality. It’s a completely new and unknown reality! The marriage dilemma that nearly every young reformer faces is broken here when by faith we see a new land where the pleasure in God will be so intense that it will not only fulfill the longing for such deep intimacy as found in marriage, but it will also surpass it in such a way that even those who were married here will not miss it there (Matthew 22:30)! That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But that’s what it will be!

How about letting faith take control of your imagination and begin to see the kingdom of heaven right now. I’d like to pose a challenge to you: Try to think of at least one example of something that our mind cannot attain yet, but will be truth in that new reality. Then, create a story or publication on Instagram mentioning it, using the #youthmessenger. Let’s share with others and develop our faith even more deeply!

Well, all that sounds very theorical and not so practical. All for the future, nothing for now. So, what difference can this make in our life now? How can we live that by faith? What is the practical application of all this?

As mentioned above, we are moved by pictures. So that picture of immortality in that new reality can make us stop being so in love with our mortality and its feeble pleasures, and instead start seeking immortality with its eternal pleasures. That picture unplugs our mind from the power of the vain promises of this passing world. But it is not only this! It’s not that we should wait and live for a kingdom that will come. The kingdom of heaven has already begun. That future reality has already been inaugurated.

“Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14, 15).

When Christ came, He inaugurated the new kingdom. It was not yet in its fullness, but was nonetheless begun. In the world darkened by oppression, injustice and cruelty Jesus came as the Light, enlightening it with true love. Showing that things from now on would be different. We as His body are now the light of the world. We are the proponents of the coming reality, the messengers of the new kingdom. How can we carry out this task?

a) By living now with the same traits of character when dealing with the world around us as if we were already in the kingdom of heaven.

b) By loving our enemies here since in the new kingdom, we have no enemies.

c) By being fair in all we do because there is neither injustice nor unfairness in the new kingdom.

d) By forgiving all who have offended us because, in the new kingdom, grace abounds in all things.

e) By giving our best days, our health, our sleep, our desires, our longings and even our lives on behalf of others since in the new kingdom—we’re immortal.

When through the Holy Spirit we put on the lenses of faith and start seeing and living reality through it, the kingdom of heaven is made real. We can picture it. We can feel it. We become part of it. Imagination ceases to think about unreal things and instead becomes a means through which we see the deeper reality of the Kingdom. Do you live this life of faith? Is the kingdom real and palpable in your daily life? Have you already tasted the flavor of immortality by having the assurance of it?

Today, the kingdom is seen only as a sketch without color and life of what it will be immortality. But we can live it right now. So let us enjoy the little drops of what is to come until the moment when our longing will meet the object of our desire. Then, when the sketch will receive its colors and becomes a perfect picture, mortality will finaly destroyed with all its harsh implications. Immortality with immensurable pleasures will be complete. Until then, let’s live it by faith.