Perspective:
No matter what we accomplish
No matter what we achieve
No matter what we build
No matter how many people speak well of us…
The day will come when your body will be laid in the ground. Someone will say a few nice words.
And everyone will go eat potato salad and ham sandwiches on Hawaiian buns. The kids will run outside and play on the swings. Everyone will look at the pictures of when you were young.
They will tell the someone who said some nice words “That was a very nice service.”
And six months later, people will forget what you looked like.
A few years after that, they will forget that you existed.
Your loves, your hates, your feuds, your words, your talents, your desires – will all be buried and forgotten along with your bones. And after that, the judgment.
This is what Jesus meant when he talked about treasure.
And yet, we strive so hard to lay up treasure on this earth, gathering together food for the worms and the moths and the rust,
And we forget to remember to look up from this trough, where Christ is.
We forget to count all of our earthly treasures as dung, that we might know Christ and the power of the resurrection.
He doesn’t count significance the same way that we do.
In His kingdom, weakness is strength. The greatest one takes the lowest place. The sheep are ready with a glass of water, a kind word, clothing for the naked.
In his kingdom, money and power count for nothing whatsoever, for the cattle on a thousand hills are his already.
We follow him into glory with nothing but a cross, or we don’t follow him at all.
8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;
10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,
11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil. 3:8-11)
My Only Comfort 
I really enjoyed reading this Sam.I’m from Scotland and have been reading your blog for a while. It is always such an encouragement to me. Thanks so much.
Pleased to meet you. Thank you for saying hello.
LOL! You don’t know me in real life Sam, but I promise I’m a pretty gentle soul. The one time I got into it with a pastor, it was over that darn potato salad/funeral story! I kid you not, I got up, walked out and went home and chalked out in giant letters across my fence, “He is risen, indeed.” It’s still on the fence four years later.
We are the apple of our Father’s eye, the center of His affections. We are not insignificant to Him! He even collects every tear in a bottle for us. We will not be forgotten. I don’t believe we forget our loved ones either. Those funeral attendees who show up for the free potato salad probably just had a relationship with you for social reasons, people favor. Not only is that not God’s heart for you, that’s not how your friends and family are going to feel either. 🙂
I agree with you completely and did not at all mean that we were insignificant to God. But it is true that life under the sun is “vanity of vanities”. That we are flowers that fade and die.
I know of those who have spent their whole lives pursuing a “legacy” on this earth. They were miserable and restless and never learned peace.
This earth has no lasting treasure. Our ONLY treasure is that we are the apple of our Father’s eye, who does indeed raise us from the dead and gives us a name that cannot be taken away.
Until that day, we love, we do good to one another, we plant flowers, we try to bring a little beauty into this cursed world, and we mourn. But we don’t mistake this earth for our lasting treasure that can never be taken away.
Death is unnatural and an enemy to be destroyed, and that is the day that I long for.