LIFE
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life." —John Lennon
Life. How short life is. John Lennon was 41 on December 8, 1980. Late in the evening he and Yoko Ono got out of a limousine, and as they walked toward their apartment, Lennon was shot twice in the back and twice in the shoulder. All four shots were at close range. John Lennon died.
Singer, song writer, Prince, wealthy, popular, and very talented, died on April 21, 2016, of an overdose of Fentanyl. He was 57.
I was driving back from the Memphis airport, heading to Hardy, Arkansas on the afternoon of August 16, 1977. I stopped at a gas station to fill up. The attendant asked me if I had heard the King died. I asked him, what king? “Elvis, man,” was his reply. Elvis was 42.
John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. He was rich, powerful, extremely well liked, and crowds of people were lining the streets of Dallas Texas, hoping for an opportunity to see him. It was November 22, 1963. He and his wife, among others, were riding in a Lincoln convertible, waving at adoring fans when he was shot to death by an assassin’s bullet. He was 46.
Life. How quickly it’s over. How easily it can be taken from us. Power, money, fame, intelligence, plans, spouse, children, and so many other pieces and things of life, are all meaningless if our time of life on this planet is over.
Jesus spoke of a wealthy farmer. He had an abundant crop, lots of money in the bank, and a leisurely life to look forward to. He made plans to tear down the barns he had. Build bigger barns. Store his crops and devote the rest of his life spending his money on himself. He wished to be pampered. The problem with those arrangements is that God was requiring his life on the same day he was forming them. All that he had worked so hard for, all of his plans, all of his hopes for pampering, all gone. Left behind for whoever came after him.
The book of Ecclesiastes speaks to us about life lived without God. “Meaningless. Meaningless, says the teacher, everything is meaningless.” Whatever we have will pass away. In the end, all of the things we have worked for, all of our experiences, all of our friends and loved ones, all, all, every last bit will be forever lost to us on that day when we take our last breath.
Yes. This is all true. But we do have hope of something glorious, something eternal, something that will go with us to the grave. It is life in Christ Jesus. It is a resurrection to eternity.
Two sisters, Mary, and Martha sent a message to Jesus. “Our brother, Lazarus, is sick and needs you. Come before it’s too late.” Lazarus died. He had been in the tomb for four days when Jesus arrived. Martha met Him and, perhaps, even rebuked Him a little. “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” The conversation continued like this, “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus wasn’t just asking Martha if she believed what He said. He was asking us.
Josiah Tilton