Hebrews 11:14 — For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
For some reason the thought that’s been on my mind today is that we are all “just Passin’ thru”.
It’s a sobering thought — not just that we all die, although as we get older it’s an inevitable realization — but that no matter how permanent anything or anyone seems, change is inevitable.
In life there is, it seems, not much that can be relied on — house, job, friends, family, fashion, ideas … Everything changes. So what should we do? Shall we despair of committing to anything, there being no point since it won’t last? There are better ways!
There are some brave souls, it seems, who set their faces against fate and determine to make themselves a permanent marker. They build a house, or a business or a royal dynasty even — but their end is the same as yours and mine. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the epitaph for one such in his poem Ozymandias:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Their’s is a brave, but futile course. In most human activities not much lasts. There is a better way — the one followed by the faithful.
It’s interesting what happens when you realize that nothing material that you build on this earth has any permanent worth. It makes you turn to building spiritual things and claiming the promise of riches in heaven. That was the path followed by those the writer of Hebrews was talking about — all the people in Faith’s Hall of Fame, earlier in Hebrews 11.
Harry Ironside, in his book “Studies in the Epistle to the. Hebrews” says of the pilgrims of faith:
They left this scene without having received all that was promised, but the promises became to them very real, and they laid hold of them, and because of these promises confessed themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth. To relinquish present things in view of future blessing is to declare openly that one is seeking a country. No one can truly relinquish this world below until he has seen by faith a better and brighter world above.
It is a glorious epitaph, and one we could all aspire too. It would turn our lives upside down — what would building for a temporary lifestyle look like?