Eternal

“Most of us will live an amazingly long life and should not worry so much about dying young.” Those are the words of Jonathan Clements, 61, who wrote more than 1,000 personal finance columns for The Wall Street Journal between 1994 and 2015. Plan on living past 90 and save accordingly, he advised, when he wasn’t running marathons or riding bicycles.

In May of 2024, he saw a doctor about some balance issues. Two days later, he received a devastating cancer diagnosis. Scans revealed a golf-ball-size tumor on his lung, and the disease has spread to his brain, his liver and elsewhere. Anything beyond 12 decent months would be a victory. “I’m definitely on the clock here,” he said as we sat at his kitchen table this week.

Clements said, “The No. 1 thing money can do for us is to give us a sense of financial security, and the way it does that is not to spend it and to hang onto it.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Clements did not know that there is only one source of true security, and it is not money. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psa. 46:1).

Dust goes unnoticed, for the most part. It surrounds us, but unless we work in construction, we hardly ever see it. When we do, it is usually because we are trying to Swiffer it up or sweep it away. Although we are continually touching and inhaling a cocktail of hairs, pollens, fibers, mites, and skin cells, we try not to think about it.

Dust speaks of decay. It comes about through the decomposition of other things, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. Dust in a home means our cells have died recently. Ghost towns and postapocalyptic movies are covered in it, highlighting the loss not just of creatures or structures but of civilization itself. And God says: “You are made of that.”

It doesn’t sound very encouraging. Being dust-people means that one day we will be dead people. When humanity fell in the Garden, the resulting curse—“for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19)—clearly referred to mortality.

We may find it liberating, unsettling, or terrifying to contemplate, but one day our cells will be swirling in the autumn leaves, wedged between sofa cushions, and hidden behind radiators. The same is true of the world’s most powerful and influential people … even our apparently invincible empires will finally turn to dust. So will we.

But only for a while. One day, Paul says, we will no longer be modeled after the man of dust who came out of the soil, but after the man of heaven who came out of the tomb (1 Cor. 15:49).

In his book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson takes readers on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human anatomy. Starting from the outside and moving in, Bryson begins by describing the largest organ of the human body, the skin. His description is telling:

The skin consists of an inner layer called the dermis and an outer epidermis. The outermost surface of the epidermis is made up entirely of dead cells. It is an arresting thought that all that makes you lovely is deceased. Where body meets air, we are all cadavers.

He then concludes:

These outer skin cells are replaced every month. We shed skin copiously, almost carelessly: some twenty-five thousand flakes a minute, over a million pieces every hour. Run a finger along a dusty shelf, and you are in large part clearing a path through fragments of your former self. Silently and remorselessly we turn to dust.

In an interview for the Howard Stern Show, former First Lady Hillary Clinton was asked about her faith.

“I have a deep faith,” she said before saying she believes there is a God and that when we die, we’re going to go “somewhere.” “We’re learning more and more about what holds the universe together. Dark matter makes up most of the universe. We really don’t quite know what it is. It’s energy. I think religious belief and science are compatible, unlike those who reject one or the other. I think that energy doesn’t die. Energy keeps going.”

Stern replied, “That’s comforting.”

As the NBA gears up for the playoffs (right on the heels of college basketball's March Madness), there was an interesting article about one thing about basketball that hasn't changed since James Naismith invented the game in 1891—the floor of a basketball court. The first game was played on a floor of hard maple. According to an article in The Guardian, "Maple flooring is harder than red oak, black walnut, or cherry flooring, and its tight grain made it easier to clean and maintain. … The maple floor also turned out to be the perfect surface for dribbling a basketball."

So it is no surprise that "the NCAA said the official courts for both the men's and women's Final Fours were made of 500 trees of northern maple carefully harvested from the Two-Hearted River Forest Reserve in Michigan's Upper Peninsula."

And the NBA follows suit. All of the courts "but one NBA team are composed of hard maple; the Boston Celtics, who play on a red-oak parquet floor, are the exceptions. Hard maple offers the most consistent playing surface, but it also provides 'bounce-back,' or shock resistance, to lessen fatigue on players' knees and ankles."

Possible Preaching Angles: Some things have lasting value, even infinitely beyond maple floors—like God's Word, or the glory of God.

If you own stock in Amazon, you get a letter from founder Jeff Bezos each year, reminding you of Amazon's commitment to think long-term. In his 2015 letter to shareowners, Bezos opens: ''A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital and it's durable in time—with the potential to endure for decades" [emphasis added].

Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, and his commitment to long-term thinking got him to thirty-fifth on the global Fortune 500 list in just 20 years. Each year, he prints his first letter to shareholders at the beginning of the annual report. It's a simple, symbolic act to highlight his value for the long view. The original 1997 letter outlines nine ways Amazon will demonstrate their long-term approach, including the statement: "We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.''

Possible Preaching Angles: Eternity; Heaven—Christians could say, "Good for Amazon and Jeff Bezos, but why not think even further ahead—like into eternity?"

Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Stephen King, who has spent his career writing about death. When the interviewer asked, "Do you hope to go to heaven?" he responded, "I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring. The idea that you're going to lounge around on a cloud all day and listen to guys play harps? I don't want to listen to harps. I want to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis!"

Possible Preaching Angles: Eternal Life; Heaven—Levi Lusko comments: "That's why it's a mistake to allow unbiblical imagery, perpetuated by cartoons, comic books, and well-intentioned but misinformed Sunday school teachers, to color our thinking. I am with Stephen King 100 percent. I don't want to go to such a heaven either! Fortunately no such heaven is actually to be found in the Bible."

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.

—C. S. Lewis (in a 1952 letter)

I'll never forget something I saw when I walked into the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Just inside the door, in an alcove, was an arrangement called "The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation's Millennium General Assembly." There were 180 pieces in the arrangement—from tables to chairs to small decorative items—all pulled together by James Hampton, a quiet, virtually unknown janitor from the D.C. area. Hampton simply wanted to depict God's throne room.

This extraordinary collection had been found in his garage after he died in 1964. No one knew he had been working on it for some 20 years. All these pieces were made from cast-off items—old furniture, gold and aluminum foil from store displays, bottles, cigarette boxes, wine bottles, rolls of kitchen foil, used light bulbs, cardboard, insulation board, construction paper, desk blotters, and sheets of transparent plastic—all precariously held together with glue, tape, tacks, and pins.

On a bulletin board in the garage he had copied this verse from Proverbs 29:18: "Where there is no vision the people perish." He believed people needed a vision of God's glory, so he set out, singlehandedly, to give it to them.

No one knows much about James Hampton, but we know this: what he imagined as God's throne room has become a national treasure.