Scope and scale are not often our strength. In the heat of the immediacy of our circumstances it is difficult to look beyond the immediate. Often our emotional state can be so intense that we begin to think nothing will ever change it. When we settled down last week for a long Thanksgiving nap, our bellies stretched and tryptophan coursing through our veins we thought there would never come a time when we’d be hungry again. Our feelings may be fierce but they can also be fickle. Circumstances change such that our mood rings end up with more flash and dazzle than a Las Vegas night.
Yet it was the wise Solomon who told us that there is nothing new under the sun. One emotional state we sometimes suffer from is boredom. Is this, we wonder, all there is? No, this isn’t all there is. This, in fact, isn’t big enough to be even a fraction of what is. Seventy years, even eighty or 120 divided by infinity is all the same, nothing. Which is why the Apostle Paul tells us “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (II Corinthians 4:7).
When I was a boy, which was just a moment ago, the brewers of Schlitz beer told us all, “You only go around once, so you better go for the gusto.” I still don’t know what gusto is, but I do know that it is not at all true that we only go around once. This life doesn’t come to an end but ends at a beginning, the beginning of our eternity. If I am able to remember, in ten thousand years, the rage I felt today when I couldn’t find my keys, it will only be to laugh at myself. If I’m able to remember, in ten million years, the shame I felt in the back of the police car, it will only be to praise God for His grace. I will, as will you and every human who ever lived, go around twice. The first time will be but a moment; the second will never end.
Wisdom, I would suggest, requires that we recognize on this journey the far greater size and significance of the next journey. The One who descended from eternity that He might lift us up to eternity is the very one who put eternity in our hearts. His humiliation was but for a moment, His exaltation for forever. As it is for all who are in Him. May He teach us to number our days, that we would see how few that are, not that we would despair, but that we would look from here to eternity.