Paperwork

We have an elderly uncle. He is 93 years old and getting around his assisted living facility in his power chair. Due to his season of life, though, he no longer has a driver’s license for anything with four wheels and a gas engine. When he asks to take his car for a drive, we have to remind him that he no longer is allowed to drive legally. His license is expired. He protests that’s not the case. So, we ask him to take out his wallet. Well, his wallet is at this time unlocatable. (Thankfully, we’d long ago removed important things out of it.) So, we remind him that the law requires the proper paperwork if he were to drive.

 

Paperwork is essential for many things other than driving. Proper receipts not only get you out of Costco, they now get you out of Walmart. A Social Security card is necessary when applying for a job. A birth certificate if often needed if registering for school. To receive veterans’ benefits, you will need a copy of your discharge papers…and other things we have found. Paperwork is also necessary to secure a loan for a house. Sometimes you can get by with the digital “paperwork,” but it’s still paperwork.

One thing most all types of paperwork have in common is a  signature, a stamp or a seal of approval. That’s what makes it official, usable for the purpose desired.

It’s no different when we leave this land of the living. The future of eternity requires paperwork, the paperwork of the Lamb’s Book of Life, as John wrote in Revelation 21:27. The word “only” in that verse speaks to the essentialness of this paperwork. Our name has to be officially recorded on this paperwork in order for us to enter the place of eternity John tells us about in Revelation 21 4—that place where God wipes away every tear, where there will be no death nor mourning, where there will be no crying or pain. It’s the place where the tree of life offers healing fruit and the water of life flows freely. It’s the place where the curse and all wrong are banished.

Paperwork. Any attempt to live without it here on earth just isn’t reality. Any thriving business will tell you, to use a colloquialism, “that’s pie in the sky.” You can’t live eternally without it either.

Nothing evil will be permitted in it—no one immoral or dishonest—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Revelation 21:27 (TLB)