My father-in-law was in the Navy, so my wife moved several times growing up. Where we live now is the longest she has ever lived anywhere. And I suppose that’s true for me as well. A former military couple we know moved their family about twenty times in as many years. Apparently one of their teenagers put his foot down because he wanted to be able to stay in one place and finish high school. So, they then stopped moving the whole family with every new assignment.
Despite the incidence of wanderlust in youth, something in most of us longs to experience a sense of home. In a world where so many things no longer last, where everything is changing around us at an ever-accelerating rate, the idea of permanence holds great appeal. Many who are renting would prefer to buy if they could. Many, if not most, temporary workers and contractors hope for so-called “permanent” employment someday. Newer professors aspire to win tenure at their educational institutions.
People, knowing they won’t live forever but hoping to be remembered, name towns and places after themselves. That was so important to my earthly father that he named a sand dune he built a beach cottage on “Mount McKoy.” He even had a street sign made for his long country driveway with his first and last name, followed by “RD” for “road.”
New church plants, weary of setting up and tearing down to meet in a school every Sunday, long to grow big enough to acquire a building to put their name on.
King David in the Bible wanted the same for the ark of the covenant. He envisioned a permanent place for God’s presence to dwell. While God permitted him to gather the materials, the task fell to his son Solomon to build the temple. But even that magnificent structure turned out to be temporary. It was destroyed in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem.
Interestingly, after his unique seven-year humiliation living like his livestock, King Nebuchadnezzar made a statement about permanence. He says of God, For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation (Daniel 4:34). Hundreds of years earlier, King David had written something similar. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations (Psalm 145:13). Nebuchadnezzar finally realized the truth of Psalm 49:20: Man in his pomp, yet without understanding, is like the beasts that perish.
Here we have no lasting city (Hebrews 13:14). Sometimes I break out of our surrounding materialistic clamor to consider what will outlast me. As I get older I’ve become acutely aware we’re not here forever. We take nothing with us when we die. Yet Jesus appointed us to bear fruit—fruit that would remain. We bear fruit not by human effort, but by abiding in Him, the true Vine (John 15:5). And that relationship we get to have with Him is the only thing that can satisfy our deep longing for permanence, because it will last forever.
Ah, Carrie, what a timely reminder, as I witness life (through the eyes of a resident) in a nursing home!! This life (and our suffering) is temporal…