Transient

In his new book, Jeff Meyers writes:

Human institutions are impor­tant, but they don't last forever. Human institutions, not just our individual lives, are more frag­ile than we realize. Even the most powerful human institutions can falter and die.

Of the 500 largest companies in 1955, only sixty remained on the Fortune 500 list in 2017. Have you heard of American Motors, Brown Shoe, Studebaker, Collins Radio, or Zenith Electronics lately? In 1955, they were among America's most popular brands. They no longer exist.

Now the most well-known companies are Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Netflix. Only one of the founders of these six companies was even alive in 1955 (Bill Gates of Microsoft was born in October of that year). Someday we'll likely look back on these massive brands with nostalgia. I imagine my children someday pulling their children close and saying, "When I was a kid, we had this thing called Facebook.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

How do we find meaning in a fleeting life? We must not look to human institutions. Only in God do we find what is lasting and secure. Second Corinthians 4:18 says, "We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." What we see is not all there is.

At one point in time, you couldn’t walk 30 feet on a New York City block without encountering a pay phone. In the early 2000s, there were around 30,000 public street pay phones registered with the city. But in May of 2022, a curious crowd gathered in Times Square as a power saw cut through the base of a pay phone on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 50th Street. That was the final New York City public pay telephone.

In the age of the smartphone, it may be hard to recall the importance of pay phones in the daily life of New Yorkers. New York is a dense, pedestrian city. It wasn’t until the 1940s that even half of Americans had a phone. If you need to make a call on the go, the pay phone was really necessary.

“I hate to use the word nostalgia,” said Mark Thomas, who has been documenting pay phones in New York City. “But I think people miss a period of time when a call meant something. When you planned it and you thought about it, and you took a deep breath and you put your quarter in.”

New York City’s chief technology officer explained the need for the change: “Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile, and from the automobile to the airplane to the digital evolution has progressed from pay phones to high-speed Wi-Fi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Communication—No matter how much the forms of communication change, human beings (friends, spouses, parents, church members) will always have a need to communicate. And God will always have a way to communicate with us. (2) Change—Shows that not all change is bad. Some changes are inevitable, even when they come with losses.

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 a question and answer period after one of his lectures, C.S. Lewis was asked which of the world's religions gives its followers the greatest happiness. Lewis paused and said, "While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is best."

Possible Preaching Angle: In other words, if you want instant, but very short-term happiness, create a religion that focuses on worshipping you.

In his book Rust: The Longest War, Jonathan Waldman takes us chapter by chapter into the world of oxidation and the problem of rust. He tells the story of how America almost lost the Statue of Liberty to corrosion, the constant struggle needed to maintain oil pipe lines, the development of stainless steel and rust resistant paint, how aluminum cans are treated to deter oxidation, and of the enormous cost and effort needed to beat back rust in the military—especially the navy's ships.

Rust isn't just annoying; it's expensive and dangerous. But rust happens and we can't stop it. For instance, on August 1, 2007, a bridge spanning the Mississippi in Minnesota suddenly collapsed during the evening rush hour. The bridge, identified as Bridge 9340 in official records, was rated as the second busiest in the entire state, with 140,000 vehicles crossing it every day. One hundred eleven vehicles rode the surface of the bridge down as much as 115 feet to the surface of the water and riverbank, with 13 people killed and 145 injured. A school bus with 63 children returning from a field trip ended up resting on a guardrail at the bottom.

The collapsed bridge over Mississippi had one cause: oxidation. Iron (in the soil and the bridge gussets) reacted chemically with oxygen and the result is a reddish product that eats and destroys that we call rust.

Possible Preaching Angles: Jesus told us that the same thing would happen to our possessions—as beautiful as they look now, everything we own will be subject to the power of rust.

In a certain sense, every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history with its empires, its wars and revolutions, its blossoming and fading civilizations.

When you define contentment as an ideal match, you're subject to the fact that it's like passion: it often doesn't last long.