Imagine that you ended up living for about 100 years on earth before passing into eternity.  Now close your eyes and, in your mind, compare that 100 years to living 1,000 years in heaven, then compare it to living 10,000 years in heaven, then to 100,000 years, then to 1,000,000 (one million) years, then to 1,000,000,000 (one billion) years, and so on, until your mind can’t even name the numbers, and the 0s after the 1 themselves reach into the billions and trillions.  What, then, is that 100 years (a long life by the standards of this world) in comparison to the infinite number of years in eternity?  In fact, mathematicians will tell you that the 100 years when compared to infinity (or divided by infinity) is in fact ZERO.  That’s right, nothing at all.  From the perspective of eternity, those 100 years will appear as NOTHING.

Imagine now that for just a minute or two of those 100 years on earth you prayed to God from your heart.  In return, God grants you an increase in happiness for ALL ETERNITY.  That’s like exchanging a penny for the sum, not of a million dollars, but of an INFINITE amount.  Every merit and good deed has that same “exchange rate” between time and eternity; and, alas, so does every bad deed.  If only we truly believed in the “exchange rate” between this earth-penny and the heavenly reward, we would spend every instant of our time collecting and accuмulating these earth pennies.

We KNOW this to be true by our faith, yet we do not behave accordingly.  Why?  We simply don’t think about it enough.  We get caught up in the time stream and the perspective of this world.  So we need to mediate upon this truth frequently.  Try to spend 10 minutes every day meditating upon “Eternity”.  Close your eyes.  Imagine the 100 years of your life.  Then start counting up the number of years in eternity and keep holding the 100 years up to it in comparison until it dissolves into nothingness.  Then imagine doing some small good deed during those 100 years and compare it to the infinite reward you will receive in eternity.  Conversely, compare the momentary satisfaction of committing a sin to the infinite and endless suffering that would come as a consequence of it.