John, in his Gospel, does not stress living with God forever in heaven. His emphasis is on living now in the unending presence of God. This present life in God must be nourished.
In John 6:32-33 Jesus offers himself as that much needed nourishment. When the Israelites were starving in the desert after their escape from Egypt God fed them with manna. Jesus tells the crowd and us that now instead of manna his Father has sent him to nourish our life in God here and now. To do this Jesus gives us his very self in his teaching and in the Eucharist.
John's stress on living now in the unending presence of God is at the heart of the incarnational spirituality that is so much a part of my life. I find myself often aware of God in simple everyday things, in the plainest gifts of nature, in the ordinary give and take of human relationships. God's Word made Flesh nourishes that Presence.
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