“We shall never enjoy ourselves fully till we enjoy God eternally.” Thomas Watson
BTW note: Watson’s point is less about ‘how much do you enjoy God: a little or a lot?’ The comparison point is ‘now or in eternity’ He’s saying we don’t really enjoy life to its fullest until we are in heaven enjoy God forever. He’s especially offering this insight to those who are struggling and suffering in this life.
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God“
“Man’s chief end is to enjoy God for ever.”
In this life
In the age to come
Body of Divinity, 6-26
“If any of you try to content yourselves with this world, any hope to find a heaven in the midst of your business and your family without looking upward for it, you labor in vain.” -Charles Spurgeon, Talks to Farmers
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, we consider it his duty to escape.” -J. R. R. Tolkien
“The Holy City is not the Church of this country only, but of the whole world as well: not that of this age only, but from Abel himself down to those who shall to the end be born and believe in Christ, the whole assembly of the Saints, belonging to one city; which city is Christ’s body, of which Christ is the Head. There, too, dwell the Angels, who are our fellow-citizens: we toil, because we are as yet pilgrims: while they within that city are awaiting our arrival. Letters have reached us too from that city, apart from which we are wandering: those letters are the Scriptures, which exhort us to live well.” -Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 91
BTW NOTES: Many places on the internet simply offer the paraphrase “Scriptures are our letters from home.” However, the above is the direct quote. The paraphrase is close, but it’s not exactly what Augustine said (as far as I can tell).
“Follow then towards heaven, if thou do not answer falsely when it is said, ‘Lift up your hearts,’ lift up your thoughts, your love, your hope: that it may not rot upon the earth…. ‘For wherever your treasure is, there will be your heart also.’ (Matt. 6:21)” -Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 91
“There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.” -Calpurnia to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird
“Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. Aristotle has told us that a city is a unity of unlikes,6 and St Paul that a body is a unity of different members.7 Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others—fresh and ever fresh news of the ‘My God’ whom each finds in Him whom all praise as ‘Our God’.” -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
“The Brocken spectre ‘looked to every man like his first love’, because she was a cheat. But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.” -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
“The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
A Pilgrim's Theology 