Live For The Line, Not The Dot

If I drew a long horizontal line upon which I drew a small dot and asked, “If that is a timeline, what do you think the dot represents?” You might answer that is your life in comparison to human history!”

However, that is incorrect. You immediately may ask, “What else could it be?”

“The line is all of eternity, the dot is human history,”

 “So where is your life?” “It is just a little tiny speck on the dot, so little one can’t see it.” Counting all the years in the Bible since Creation up to the current time adds up to less than several thousand years which is a very small dot on the line of eternity. Even if your life span on Earth is 100 years, it is a very tiny speck on the dot.

“So for what are you living?” How big are your problems on this line? With what should you be concerning yourself — a little tiny speck or the line of eternity?

In his book, “The Treasure Principle”, Randy Alcorn coins the phrase, “Live for the line and not the dot.”  He perfectly gives us this word picture for our lives.

In Creation God did not desire that there ever be a dot, only a line where humans would live forever. However, man and woman were created with freedom of choice, and they chose to sin by disobeying God which resulted in God instituting death where humans would only live a very short time in these physical sinful bodies. It is really a blessing from God that death removes us from these temporal physical sinful bodies. However, it is only through the redemption available through Jesus Christ that God provides “The Way” to once again live for the line of eternity in Heaven.

The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:17 put it this way: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

The hardships that we experience in our tiny speck of life are light and momentary. This verse is not a flippant comment from a man who knew little suffering; a man of privilege trivializing the problems of others. Read Paul’s partial list of his trials in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28. He was no stranger to pain and hardship, yet he kept his focus on the eternal weight of glory toward God being achieved through them. This lightened the burdens with which he was surrounded.

Even as we look back on our life with years and even decades of perspective, we now realize proper priorities and unexpected rewards. The crisis that seemed life-ending or career-ending turned out to be a redirection which God used for our good and His glory. (Of course, there are things that we have yet to understand, that are painful still.)

We need to encourage our family members and others to keep their eye on the line and not the dot. We need to help them by word and by example to live life in the light of glory. The shortsighted person lives for the dot. The person with eternal perspective lives for the line. Our decision-making process should always take eternal ramifications into consideration. God wants us to have an eternal perspective of life since our lives on Earth are so short in the grand scheme of eternity.

Colossians 3:1-3 says, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul understood that having a heavenly perspective in life is part and parcel with being a Christian. It’s fundamental, not optional. If we fulfill the criteria he set forth in the beginning and ending of those verses (died and raised with Christ), then this applies to us. As Christians this is a command that God fully expects us to carry out.

Unlike other, more tangible imperatives, this requires more from us than just an outward action. This requires a wholesale change in the way we think. We are to “seek the things that are above” or those things that are eternal and not the “things that are on earth” or temporal. When we evaluate anything in life, we need to look at it from God’s point of view. We don’t have the benefit of omniscience, like God, but that’s why He gave us His Word, the Bible. Obviously, explicit detail is not given for every situation that we’ll face but the foundational instructions given to us through Scripture provide the principles we need for every situation, event or decision.

When we forget to view things from God’s perspective, we tend to get shortsighted and temporal in our thinking. The world we live in today seeks immediate gratification instead of the future fruits of God’s eternal promises. This results in limiting our consideration to the immediate benefits and consequences, when in reality there are long term and eternal ramifications.

There are many benefits to living for the line and not the dot but perhaps the most important one is that we don’t focus on the immediate rewards and consequences but consider the long term and eternal implications. Our Heavenly Father allows us the privilege of playing a role in eternity through His Great Commission. He truly wants His adopted children (Galatians 4:4-7) to have His heart for the unbelievers who are eternally lost without Christ. In our tiny speck on this dot God asks us through His power to be witnesses of Christ in our neighborhoods, our city, our state, our country, and the world (Acts 1:8). One of the many enjoyments in the line of eternity in Heaven will be seeing and being with those who God used us, in a small way, in their salvation process.

Heavenly Father, may we live for the line and not the dot but at the same time making our speck in the dot have eternal significance.