At a seminar meeting, the speaker stood in front of a large group of people with a roll of stickers in his hand. Behind him on the platform were tables filled with props that represented the stuff of our lives – a car, a house, a tiny desk that stood for our jobs.
The speaker roamed the stage and placed a red sticker on each item. He explained to the crowd that they may not be able to see it from where they were sitting, but each sticker contained the same word: TEMPORARY.
He said, “Everything that I’m putting a sticker on is temporary. It will not last. It will fade away. We invest our emotions in them because when we acquire it, it gives us a little thrill. And we think the thrill will last. But it does not. It fades. And eventually, so will what we acquire.
“If you are living for what you see up here, then you are living for what is temporary. Temporary satisfaction, temporary joy, temporary meaning. It will come to an end – but you never will. It will leave you with a terrible emptiness.”
Finally the speaker plastered red stickers on everything sitting on the stage.
And then the speaker went on, “There is only ONE thing in this room that is not temporary. There is only one item that you will be allowed to take with you from this life into the next.” He took out a roll of blue stickers. He had a little girl join him on stage, and he put a blue sticker on the collar of her dress.
“When you get to the end of your life and take in your last breath, what do you want your life to have been about? What will make it rich in the eyes of God?”
People.