You may have noticed (if you are following this) that each post is put up at exactly 8am each day. No, I am not writing these "live" but days in advance and using Typepad's Publish On... facility. As you read this I will probably be on a train up to London to catch the exhibition of Byzantium antiquities at the Royal Academy of Arts, so I don't quite know what I will be seeing, or what I will make of it...
I found a deep sadness in reading some books last year around the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been founded in the fourth century to be the new Imperial City for the Empire by Constantine on the foundations of the old city of Byzantium. Glory layered upon glory and yet, ultimately destined to fall. Constantinople fell almost literally by somebody forgetting to close a door behind him.
Last autumn we grabbed a short break in Rome, another city with most of its glories in the past. Rome's fall was more graceful, but it was a fall none the less for all its previous honour and treasure.
What do we hold of value that is destined to crumble and fall?
Our wealth? almost certainly...
Our trust in our own strength? pretty definite as well...
Even our view that we are making ourselves something of lasting value for the Kingdom of God? quite possibly...
The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes repeats "vanity, all is vanity". If that was Solomon then he is also supposed to have written "unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain".
Jesus said "therefore everyone who hears my words and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock".
Today's questions seem too obvious for me to need to write them...
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