A MONUMENTAL CALLING

"Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar that is in the King’s Valley, for he said, 'I have no son to keep my name in remembrance.' He called the pillar after his own name, and it is called Absalom’s monument to this day."  2 Samuel 18:18 (ESV)

How would the end of your life be described and remembered?

2 Samuel 18 describes the end of Absalom and his sinful rebellion against David his father and the rightful king of Israel. At his end, because of the death of his sons and his rebellion, Absalom is left with nothing but an egotistical pillar to himself and no son to remember him in life.
In 1818, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published his famous poem of “Ozymandias”.  In a warning to the leaders of his day, Shelley penned these words:

           I met a traveler from an antique land
          Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
          Stand in the desert . . .  
          And on the pedestal these words appear:
         ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
         Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
         Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
        Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.”
 
Absalom, as with Ozymandias, built his own monument with only himself in mind. Absalom’s sinful rebellion and later destruction of both himself and his family left him with no one to truly remember him. God, however, has given Christians a much greater calling than the fleeting nature of our human endeavors (Eph. 1:11) and selfish pedestals that are destined to one day become ‘boundless and bare’.

I was recently invited to attend a Christian men’s retreat and was challenged to remember that, as Christians, we are charged with investing in the next generation of believers (2 Tim. 2:1-2). We have been given the gift of salvation that we did not earn (Eph. 2:8-9, 1 Thess. 2:13) and are now entrusted to share that gift and teaching with the next generation (Titus 2:1-10). Our calling is to tell the coming generation (Ps. 78:3-4) of all God’s wonderful deeds (Ps. 9:1) and of the one true hope that is found in faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1-2, Heb. 12:1-2).

May our lives be marked and remembered like the old hymn that sings,
           I love to tell the story
          Of unseen things above,
          Of Jesus and his glory,
          Of Jesus and his love.
          I love to tell the story
         Because I know it’s true;
         It satisfies my longings
        As nothing else can do.
 
May our next generation be filled with those that loved to hear our story “of Jesus and his glory”. May our ‘monuments’ not be momentary pillars or ‘trunkless legs of stone’ that will soon be forgotten, but may our lives be filled with words and actions that bring glory to Jesus and His church throughout all generations (Eph. 3:20-21).