If you gain the whole world...every dollar, every possession, every ounce of power, and status. If strong men fear you and beautiful women desire you, and if you dominate all contests and win every competition most would say you have arrived.....hmmm.....arrived where?
You have achieved everything, more then mere men could ever dream, but yet death plays the role of the great equalizer. Money cannot bribe it, lust cannot manipulate it, and power cannot apply force to it. It is blind to rank or status, deaf to reason or argument, and mute in it's warnings. Everyone will travel it's journey, and eventually fall to it's gravity.
Our success seems trivial when filtered through this perspective. Our accomplishments appear fleeting when weighed In this scale. Death either robs life of it's meaning, or it provides life with it's meaning. If our lives don't matter in eternity, then I must ask the question, why do they matter at all?
I have spent the last two weeks staring into the hustle, investigating the bustle, and "in keeping up with the Jones' " I forgot to stop and ask where the Jones' were headed to? In running the "rat race" I forgot to ask what the winner got? And even more so why I'm content with the " consolation price". I'm realizing in winning I lose, and in success I fail. Because the sad thing about a finish line is....your finished.
The treasures and trophies we've amassed in the meantime offer no ransom against the end. Our very pride and joy, the apples of our eyes, leave us stranded and naked in death's embrace. In being betrayed by our belongings, who do we " belong" to? In this moment our things...won't mean a thing, because our possessions possessed us, and empty handed we successfully fail. We fail to achieve the only accolade that eternity awards....to be known by the master of all. We made it our aim, to hit the mark of human perfection, but fall short of being pleasing to Him.
We fail in expecting our temporary prestige to be valued in forevers permanent perfection. We played the game of life with monopoly money, and scratch our heads when our "hard hearts" aren't considered "legal tender" in the final accounting. In being consumed with this current world we buried the divine currency entrusted to us, and all our potential is charged to us as debt. All of our earthly accomplishments only add to the kindling fueling the final fire. Our everything evaporates into nothing, exposing our emptiness. If all our worth dwindles into worthlessness what is left to define ourselves by? Our finite fades to infinite inadequacy separating us from freedom forever.
We succeed at our own failure, because we failed to secede from momentary meaning into timeless truth. We neglected to secure salvation over status, and fortune over faith. The vapor of existence is dissipating, and time itself is running out of time. At the edge of eternity we must decide where our riches will reside buried in a broken world or invested in "unbroken" fellowship with God Almighty.
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