HoHum:
School days, school days; Dear old Golden Rule days; ‘reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic; Taught to the tune of the hick’ry stick; You were my queen in calico; I was your bashful, barefoot beau; And you wrote on my slate "I Love You, Joe"; When we were a couple o' kids
School has begun or is beginning in a few days.
WBTU:
Been discussing attachment theory in the God attachment series. Last week we said that God has placed within us a desire to reach out for others and ultimately for God himself. Solomon says the same thing from the Old Testament: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV.
What percentage of the world’s population believes there is no God: 20% 15%? 10%? A mere 2 percent of the world’s population calls themselves atheists- those who do not believe in God.
Some find it too great a leap of faith to say that creation came into being without God. True, but to come to death and believe “that’s all folks,” is too much for most to swallow. Notice in our theme verse that Solomon says that God has placed eternity in the heart, not in the mind.
Thesis: Eternity in the heart is focused on eternal time and eternal meaning. After this talk about an objection
For instances:
Eternal time
As we grow and mature we become conscious of ourselves. We can imagine and consider life beyond ourselves. We, in a sense, can go outside of ourselves, we can think outside of our solitary life, outside of our box.
Humans are the only physical beings, as far as we know, that can be transported by a novel or a movie into another world. We can know, 10 years in advance, that the moon will be full on a given day, and 60 years or so, that we will be in our grave.
Only a human life can be shaped by an ideal, such as the life of Christ, or an ideology, such as Communism, or an obsession, like making money. Only a human being can see a red, white and blue piece of fabric flapping in the wind and understand that this stands for the United States of America. By imagination the richest woman in the world may put herself in the shoes of a beggar dying on the streets of Calcutta, India, and so be moved by compassion. A man dying in a prison cell like Paul can be happy, because he sees himself as suffering for a righteous cause, while another person, free, in the prime of life and surrounded by opportunities, may commit suicide because he feels that he is trapped in a hopeless future.
Think of this: while my grandfather was extremely sick, Alex and Andy were born. 2 weeks after they were born my grandfather died. After the funeral, I came home and I thought to myself, In 80 years (that was the age of my grandfather) my two children most likely will be weak and winkled and dying as well.
As I go to the nursing homes and see how dependent the residents are upon the staff and then as I go to the nursery and watch the babies who depended upon the nursery workers, I see how life begins and ends. To catch all of that in a moment, is to get a sense of the futility of it- if that is all there is to it. There is a kind of desperate emptiness about it, a cosmic sadness, and from this we see the need to reach out in longing for another world where it will never end.
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands for ever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.” 1 Peter 1:24, 25, NIV. This is mentioned twice in the Bible because Peter is quoting from Isaiah. Peter and Isaiah bring up a simple image that can never be far from the mind of a thinking adult. We are grass; our life is a blooming and a fading, a flourishing and a withering, a birthing and a dying. This thought, even though deeply buried, is always there.
This is brought to the forefront when we experience the sudden death of a friend, a close brush with accidental death, a pain that I interpret as the first symptom of a deadly disease. It is easy to survey the life of a blade of grass; it springs up fresh and green in the springtime and then withers with the winter freeze, and rots the following season. When we apply this personally to our life, the thought of withering brings chills to our soul.
We need Peter and Isaiah to preach the really good news that God is loving towards us. That his word of mercy and comfort will endure forever. That there is something beyond this life.
Eternal meaning
Another way this truth gets to our attention is through reflection on the activities that fill our lives with meaning. This past week our house was without power for several days and how the time just inched along. The emptiness and impatience we feel at such times show that we need to engross ourselves in activities. What a blessing to be able to engross ourselves so much in something that we lose track of time and all other concerns. To focus so completely upon something is happiness. Consciousness becomes a burden in moments when our activity seems pointless to us, when we feel our time and activities are meaningless.
Most of the time we find distraction in things that interest us. We find meaning in our jobs, our families, our hobbies, in music or competitive sports, in art or politics, in church work, domestic chores, or in education. When one thing begins to bore us, we focus on something else.
The hitch to all of this is that is impossible for a human being always to be entirely absorbed in activities of the moment. Because we are reflective and curious beings, we are always prone to ask, “Why am I doing this? Is this activity to any purpose?” Many times we are backing off from the present moment and surveying and evaluating our activities. If the activity is filling a present need like, “I’m chopping wood because I want a fire this evening,” then the questioning stops. However, if the issue involves something beyond this, like say a career, the evaluation will come close to being a survey of my life as a whole: “Are the activities that most dominate my time and attention really worthy? Am I happy with the kind of happiness I derive from them? Is it enough?” Very often the answers have time and death in view. Perhaps I look over my past decade with its achievements and pleasures, and say to myself, “Possibly I have 2 or 3 decades left to me. Is that what my life amounts to?” If the answer comes back, “Yes, that is what it amounts to, and that is all. That’s the whole story,” then the sensation is one of despair.
Therefore, the concerns and activities of life are held in a web of meaninglessness, unless we believe that what we do will lead to some eternal glory and in the service of some eternal order of things. Because of our imagination, the ability to survey our lives, to see them for what they are worth, we are lead to meaninglessness. We see Solomon saying this many times in Ecclesiastes where our theme verse comes from. ““Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”” Ecclesiastes 1:2, NIV. Solomon says this 35 times. What a dreadful thought that our lives are meaningless. Without a sense of eternity, our lives are meaningless. We are born, we pay our taxes and then we die.
Objection
“My goodness, preacher, what happened on vacation? Are you going Goth, you have such a fixation upon death and eternity? How morbid can you be? Let’s not think about such things. Let’s focus on the present and seize the day while we may! Let us stress the joys that are at hand like the simple pleasures of work and play, good conversation, good food, and romance. If we focus upon what you are suggesting, preacher, this will poison the good things life offers.” Now I am not saying that we should avoid all pleasures of the present. I am not saying that we need to give into a gloomy attitude. But won’t this poison our present outlook?
The problem is that we think that the present is our ultimate reality. There is nothing more. The despair that we feel when forced to wrestle with meaninglessness is the result of our giving ultimate significance to our activities and pleasures. For many their activities and pleasures are the whole story, or at least the center of their story.
So what?
Much better to look at this life like we do school. The good news is that our mortal life is not the whole story. We have been redeemed for an eternal kingdom by a God who is the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead. The few years that we live in this present body are a kind of journey, a trip preparing us for something much greater. This is what school years are. When we are in school we understand that our activities and studies in school are directed to something beyond school. We can say that school life is a preparation for real life; and so the serious student is conscious of an unreality of the present. Much the same for the Christian. We need to be aware that every activity we undertake here is schooling directed toward a higher end. The way we conduct ourselves at work and play, the way we relate to people, the use we make of the talents and gifts we have been given, these are all exercises in preparation for real life, eternal life. Our time here is the place where our salvation is to be worked out, and so we take it with the seriousness of fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). But since its seriousness is that of a preparation for something else, it can in another sense be passed off somewhat lightly, with a sense of humor and a readiness to depart.
“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21, NIV. Paul is saying that to go on living is more preparation for the life to come moreover helping others to prepare for the life to come. To die is to graduate and begin real life.
