It’s a question asked from a movie last year entitled, “The Road.” Though I haven’t seen it, I recently read a synopsis of the movie’s plot. It is the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a father and son trying to survive a long journey on foot through a post-apocalyptic world full of desolation and tribulation and eventually arriving at the coast. When they finally arrive, the 10 year-old son, who has never seen the ocean, asks, “What’s on the other side?” Suffering from hunger and exhaustion the father replies, “Nothing.” Along the journey the father had continually held out hope to his son, but in the process slowly lost his own. The son, refusing to accept that there is not something worthwhile and good out beyond their sight and looking out to the sea says, “There MUST be something.” Realizing his son’s need for keeping hope alive, the father changes and says, “Maybe there’s a father and his son, and they’re sitting on the beach, too.”

The question the son asks is really the question that all of humanity asks: “What’s on the other side?” Have you answered that question? You see, it is the answer to that question that makes life on this side significant. The answer to that question affects your schedule, your treasures, your family, your activities, your ambitions and your decisions. It is a question that has been placed in our hearts by God. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” Why? So that we will know that we were created for more than just life here on earth and so that we will live with eternity in mind. With so many worries, cares and struggles in this life, it is easy to be overwhelmed and forget to put our eyes on eternity and that there is a Father and His Son on the other side.

If you are feeling fatigued, beaten down, worried or discouraged about life and the future, I remind you of the good news that there is not just something on the other side, but there is Someone on the other side Who loves you and offers new life to the lifeless and renewed life to the weary. You can have your soul filled and refreshed today because Jesus said in John 7:38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” And in John 4:10 Jesus answered the woman at the well and said, “If you knew the gift of God, and Who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would ask Him, and He would give you living water.” So, come and drink today and worship and let God fill you anew with His life sustaining water.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?