Recently I backed up all the message manuscripts and studies I’ve written for the past 14 years. All the Sunday morning… Sunday night… Wednesday night… and other studies/messages I’ve presented, encompassing thousands of hours of study, writing, editing, and re-writing were all contained on ONE thumb drive (With room to spare)!
That got me to thinking and reflecting. I tried to name all four of my great grandparents… and couldn’t do it. Then I tried to recall the Super Bowl MVP for last year… and couldn’t. Then I realized, before long I too will be forgotten by my great-grandchildren. In fact, 100 years from now I doubt anyone will remember who I was… what I did… or anything else about me. The same is probably true for you too.
Then another thought came to me about time. When I was a child, summer vacation lasted forever. In my twenties, summer got shorter. Now that I’m in my 50s, time is beginning to feel like I’m flying down the hill of a roller coaster. I actually found a website that “predicts” the time of a person’s demise. According to it, my last day on earth is February 12, 2033 (22 years from now. Hmmm, what about Ps 139:16?). As it is recorded in Scripture…
Ps 103:15 As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
James 1:9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes.
1 Peter 1:24 All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls…
James 4:14 You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
I don’t think I know anyone personally who will be remembered by anyone else on earth 100 years from now… much less 1,000. After all, each of us are nothing more than lint on a piece of lint in the universe! Looking up in the sky at night makes me feel more insignificant than a thumb drive that holds my most significant (Humph!) contributions to this world.
In the big scheme of things, 70 years on this earth is NOTHING! Compared to eternity, 90 years of life is less than nothing (If that is possible). Since all these things are true… how then should I think? There is one passage of Scripture that comes to mind. It is found in Matthew 6:19…
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
God is not concerned with hours… weeks… or years so much as with centuries and ETERNITY. So what if we “build bigger barns?” God doesn’t care about what we build or leave behind as much as honoring Him and becoming more like Christ. Consider what Jesus said as recorded in Luke 12:15-21…
(Jesus) said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Thanks for the timely reminder… Your “each of us are nothing more than lint on a piece of lint in the universe” is still inadequate to describe our significance in relation to God’s grand creation. Yet at the same time, that same God looked past all that creation, saw little ole me, and chose me for salvation as his own…though I’d done nothing to deserve it. THAT is something I can barely get my arms around. Thanks, Ron.
Wow.. great post P.R.! Really makes me think… be blessed.
Life is brief but eternity is forever..