My quest for immortality and lasting significance reflects the fact that God has put eternity in the human heart. I want to live forever. So does almost everyone else. Yet none of us has the power to win our own immortality. The Christian hope consists entirely in the promise of something that none of us can provide for ourselves.
Eternal life comes only as a gift.
If we try too hard to earn it, we can destroy ourselves. There are the twin tasks of loving people and loving God, the very heart of the Christian calling as Jesus saw it. Yet eternity, which God has placed in our hearts, cannot be won through these or any other human activities, even the most worthy. All we can do is trust. How extremely difficult it is to trust my very existence and the meaning of that existence into the hands of another, even when that Other is God.