Billions are spent each year in entertainment and alcohol in order to forget. Even if the illusion lasts for only a precious moment, there exists a desire to somehow whitewash our reality, to forget responsibility, the bills, our failures and most of all to ignore that we have a relentless stalker called death who eventually will win.
Death is disturbing for a number of reasons. Even if we overlook the "unknown" nature of death and the searing separation from loved ones, there still remains death's terrible judgment that everything in life is meaningless. How does death make this judgment? Death strips all meaning from our short time under the sun. The bum and the overachiever, the thug and the policeman, the uneducated and the Harvard graduate all end up in the same place - the grave. So what was achieved by all the sweat, talent and moral goodness? From the secular perspective of limiting one's horizon to life under the sun(1),we are forced to conclude that nothing is achieved, that in the end, everything is meaningless. This is the haunting nature of the dark abyss' laugh, "You are nothing, there is nothing you can do about it, and as the final insult to your humanity I will swallow you up into nothingness."
And so the business of creating distractions continues to thrive as people prefer to choose to ignore their own mortality. Although it is not a conspiracy, even our digital watches contribute toward the illusion by insulating and temporarily anesthetizing us against the reality that our life will end suddenly. The digital clock seems to give the impression that time, specifically my time, will never end. Day after day, month after month an endless stream of numbers continually cycle beneath the crystal as you work and play. And just like numbers, where you can always add one more, the digital watch seems to suggest that there will always be another second to claim as my own.
The hourglass, on the other hand, is painfully more honest. For it makes us aware not only of the passage of time, but perhaps even more importantly just how much time has already passed and that my time eventually runs out. This unabashedly frank commentary on human existence reminds us that our time is a temporary gift which continues to ebb away leaving us to stare at the awful nakedness of death face to face.
But there is good news; the bottomless and insatiable abyss has been defeated! Paul has seen the resurrected Lord! And it is this fact which causes him to shout "we know that he who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus." 2 Corinthians 4:14 Christ's victory over death changes everything about living life. His life announces a new reality, a reality that is not based upon wishful thinking or an illusion but a genuine promise. As a result, to live as a Christian in depending on Jesus means that my life is not meaningless, because death does not reign supreme. There is no need to run from or gloss over the reality of death for death does not triumph over the Christian. It does make a real difference whether I am a disciple of Christ or not.
Jesus makes it possible to live authentic lives; to face life and death. The Christian neither has to resort to the distractions of entertainment nor to the foolishness of seeking illusions to kill the pain of the relentless hourglass because Jesus makes it possible to measure our life, not merely in terms of the material and transitory, but based upon the unseen nature of the eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18 Life can be lived with confidence and with faith in what lies beyond the grave. 2 Corinthians 5:7-8 What a wonderful gift of peace and hope that God has given to us through the resurrection of our Lord. The resurrection shapes our worldview. As Paul wrote, "all things are for your benefit, so that the grace which is abounding through more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to God's glory." 2 Corinthians 4:15
(1) This terminology and the perspective of limiting knowledge to my experiences and what my mind can discover (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:13) reflects the horizon within which the majority of the the message of Ecclesiastes is worked out. Within these limitations it would appear that everything is vanity and striving after the wind..
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Barry Newton, Copyright © 2001