with something to look forward to
April 4, 2011 (Monday)
I watched documentary footage of New York City in 1931 on TCM last night. It was a humbling experience, because that was the year I was born. What was humbling about it? I was watching scenes of a bustling city, with people and vehicles of all kinds coming and going in a mad rush, and I was not even born yet.
The world was getting along fine without me. Nobody missed me, because nobody ever heard of me. I was not here.
Now here’s something just as humbling. One of these days I’m going to be gone from this world and it’s going to keep going without me. It did fine before I came; it will survive quite well after I’m gone. Humbling, I tell you.
But here’s something that ought to bring me a little comfort: everyone else is in the same boat. Remember Joseph? Remember how he went down into Egypt and later welcomed his papa and brothers to the land? There they would remain until Moses came to lead them to the Promised Land. Moses was not yet born; none of those people knew about Moses, because they moved to Egypt 350 years before his birth.
Finally Moses was born, and lived his remarkable life. He is one of the most important people of human history. When he died at 120, he left his mark. We mention him almost every time we go to church. You’ll probably hear about him if you tour Jerusalem, although he never went there. Like Abel, “being dead he yet speaketh.”
It would be nice to know that somebody will remember us after we are gone from this world. But, whether they remember us here or not, (and this is the “something we can look forward to” in our title today) we can still look forward to living in “Beulah Land,” where “everybody is somebody,” and where our name is known today, even though we haven’t arrived yet. Jesus–not you or I–will be the most important person there, and you will be blissfully happy about that, because it wouldn’t be Heaven without Him.