The poet Percy Shelley wrote a poem called Oxymandias about a statue that proclaimed the mighty works of a king long dead and a kingdom long fallen. This passage makes me think of the foolhardy king who thought his kingdom would last forever, and our foolhardy efforts to build our own kingdoms, forgetting that we are mortal and the walls of our kingdoms will erode as time goes on. As the old quote goes, the graveyards are full of indispensable people.
We are invited to invest our lives in something eternal if we choose. We can pour our time and energy into a kingdom that will truly last forever, a kingdom that shall reign forever, even if the gates of hell attempt to prevail against it.
When Paul preached, the people glorified God, not Paul.
May our lives emulate Paul's, that they point beyond ourselves. In striving for heaven, we'll find earth thrown in as well, rather than striving for earthly kingdoms and missing out on both heaven and earth.
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