Do You Want To Live Forever?

Last night I re-watched the 2002 Alexis Bledel movie Tuck Everlasting, a story with a lot to say about what it means to experience a full life.

Frustrated with her ordered and restrictive upbringing, 15-year-old Winnie Foster wanders into the nearby woods for the first time. There she meets Jesse and his kind-but-strange family, the Tucks. Winnie soon learns that the Tucks have been immortal since drinking from a mysterious pool almost 100 years earlier. As she falls in love with Jesse, who desperately wants her to drink from the pool and stay with him, Winnie also learns from Jesse’s older brother about the dark side of living forever while everyone around you grows old and dies. Eventually Mr. Tuck takes Winnie away in a small boat to explain the cost of staying stuck like a rock at the edge of a stream while the natural course of life cycles around you.

“Humans will do anything not to die,” he tells Winnie, urging her to fear the unlived life rather than fearing death. Winnie is left with a choice, to take a drink and stay with the boy she loves, or return to her family and learn how to really live.

Humans will do anything not to die. Even if it comes at a price, as it did for the Tucks. Magazines and television are cluttered with ads, anti-aging procedures, and plans that feed our longing to stay young and alive forever. The sad thing is that so many have missed the message that they can live forever. We will all go somewhere after we die. The question is, where will we spend eternity? Those of us who have confessed our sins and need for a Savior, and committed our lives to Jesus took, in a way, a drink from His life-giving pool, not so we can experience immortality on earth and stay stuck while the world goes on without us, but so we can live eternally in Heaven. Unlike the Tucks, who had to stay isolated and on the move in order to keep their secret hidden, we are told to share the way to salvation with whoever will listen and make a difference for Christ’s sake as long as we are alive.

Do you live in fear of death? Are you trying to squeeze as much into life as you can in order to have what the world considers a full life? Perhaps today will be the day when you accept the forgiveness and grace that Christ has to offer, and begin a life that is truly rich, full, and everlasting.