Both my older sister and I decided to get PhDs after finishing college. I don’t know if either of us would generally recommend this. During grad school and once you get a PhD, you spend a lot of time doing research that can often feel pointless. Aside from my advisors and a couple students in my old research group, I doubt anyone will ever read my dissertation. So as Christians, both of us have often struggled to see the point of doing this kind of work. How is God going to use it? Will it actually make any difference in the long run?

I imagine Moses asking the same questions when he wrote Psalm 90. He ends this Psalm with the cry “establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands”. This seems a strange request for a man who we now see as a hero of the faith: he led Israel out of Egypt and across the desert, wrote the first five books of the bible, and talked face-to-face with God. But the end of his story must have been heart-breaking for him: God tells him that he can’t enter the Promised Land. He dies in the desert without ever seeing the place he spent his whole life striving to get to. And throughout the years of wandering in the desert, he had to fight against the sin and rebellion of the Israelites over and over again. He must have wondered what would happen after he died. Would the Israelites follow God? Or turn away again? In Hebrews 11, we’re given an insight into what kept him from despairing that his life was a complete waste: “they [Abraham, Moses, Noah, etc.] were longing for a better country – a heavenly one.” Moses was looking ahead to being part of the new heavens and earth and living in the heavenly Jerusalem that is described in the last chapter of Revelation.

When we meditate on the last chapter of Revelation, on the glory of finally being with God, a natural question is “So why does this life even matter?” But can you imagine Biblical history without Moses? Or Job? Job suffered horribly and never really got to see the purpose of it. But now his story is a great comfort to all Christians when they suffer. Every second of their lives had an incredible value to God. And their work and lives helped to build up the kingdom of God in ways that neither of them could ever have imagined. They were both integral in preparing the way for Jesus and, ultimately, the restoration of heaven and earth that we see at the end of Revelation.

The same is true for us. God values every second of our lives. Even my dissertation has value in his eyes, as crazy as that sounds to me. As Romans 9 reminds us, God decided who he would love and save. We cannot comprehend how much it cost God to save Christians by coming to earth and dying for us. But he did because he loved us. Our lives in this world are helping to bring about his kingdom and prepare the way for the return of Christ. Our work, our relationships, our hobbies, all of it is actually important and is preparing both us and the world for Christ’s second coming. By looking forward to the end of the story in Revelation 21, as Moses did, we’re reminded that our life right now has eternal value and purpose.

~ Philip Noell