Like the stars forever

This is my “Daniel 12:2-3” plant. Through spring and summer, I water a pitiful collection of chopped-off stems in my front-door planter, hoping petunias will cover them over.  But by fall, those dead sticks have pushed out leaves and buds. By late October I’m treated to an explosion of color. Like stars in profusion picked up by powerful telescopes, they spill out of the planter in happy brilliance.  It’s quite a sight.

So what’s this about Daniel 12?  Here are the verses:
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.  Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

The book of Daniel is a mix of biography and prophecy. What encouragement to read of a godly man who refused to compromise his faith, even as he lived under the authority of corrupt kings and civil authorities!  And what an awesome exercise to work through the predictions of world history that have happened, and will yet happen.

This particular “end-times” prophecy is the Bible’s first mention of “everlasting life,” though a few other Old Testament passages referred to a “resurrection.”  For the most part, the afterlife was given shadowy terms, like “Sheol.” But David caught a vision of something more-and-better in one of his psalms:

For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow Your Holy One to see corruption.  You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.(Psalm 16:10-11)

Isaiah, whose prophecies reach far forward to a Messiah, wrote:

He will swallow up death forever,
And the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces. (Isaiah 25:8)

“Fullness of joy”! My exploding bush says it in a plant-sort-of-way. “Pleasures forevermore”—oh, to anticipate it. But it’s not a given for everyone. I wonder if Daniel looked around at his fellow exiles and idolatrous neighbors and grieved for the spiritual deadness he saw—those destined for eternal “shame and everlasting contempt.”

I’d rather be on the bright side of eternal life, shining for Jesus Christ! How about you?