The white sands of the fresh water Lake MacKenzie on Australia’s Fraser Island are one of my favorite places on planet earth. I could lay in the sun here all day long. This is from a camping trip with my son in 2005.

Scripture
I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. Revelation 20:12-13

Observation
I’m a History Channel addict. The series, Cities of the Underworld pulled me in through the labyrinth of tunnels under the worlds great cities. Paris surprised me most of all. The Romans found something underneath the city akin to Home Depot. Limestone bedrock could be mined out of tunnels and used to build the imposing edifices of the Champs-Élysées. Paris sits on top of a limestone quarry and is honeycombed with tunnels beneath its streets. Just after the time of Napoleon, Paris ran out off burial space because the city was surrounded by walls that choked expansion. City fathers decided to take the skeletal remains of Parisians from centuries past and rebury them in tidy stacks under the city. The documentary camera careened through nearly a kilometer of neatly organized human bones. They suggested that 6 million people were under the streets of Paris.

Seeing so many human remains at once gave me a profound sense of how short my life is, and how I am but one of billions who have lived on this planet. Today I walk on top of city streets. Tomorrow others will walk over me.

What is the greatest thing to fear? Death? Hardly. Death would be the greatest fear if it were really the end. But the Bible tells us death is a doorway not a deadbolt. Death introduces us into what we should fear.

Hell? No, not hell. What is more disturbing than hell is standing alone with the Great White Throne.

The throne means there is a king and judge sitting up on it.

Greatness suggests that the throne is the Supreme Court from which there is no appeal.

Whiteness implies that our lives will be compared with a standard higher than we can imagine.

Have you ever shopped for white paint? How many variety of whites can there be? Many! One color swatch that looks snowy white looks dingy compared to another. Without comparison against other samples our eyes can trick us to imagine that we are seeing true white.

And so it is in life. What looks white may in fact be grey. The other day I was chatting with an Ebay businessman. He’s the kind that makes a very decent living off of online classifieds. He said, “I don’t do gray market work.” He explained the nuances between black market and gray market. I was amazed at the cleverness of business minds in schemes that can be devised for money making that are just a little shady.

One day every action we have ever taken in life will be held up against the true color guide of heaven. What looks white on earth will look sooty in heaven. Gray is not good enough. That is something to fear. The road to hell is not paved in black but in shades of gray.

Application
Can we clean ourselves in preparation? Just read the Cat In the Hat by Dr. Seuss and the answer is obviously no. Dirty hands can never make a garment clean. This is our only prayer:

Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7

My hope today is that I don’t have to stand alone at the Great White Throne. Jesus will be with me.

Prayer
Father today let me be ready to stand before your throne, not because of what I have done but because of what you have done for me. And may I ready many, many more to stand before you with the color match of righteousness. Amen.