Nails Hammered Home

This weekend, we started cleaning out the garage.  I have 2 huge bins of Sermon Tapes.  They are a collection of all my favorite sermons over the years...(that include some of my own sermons).

I had this fantasy that after I died, my children would all listen to all of my favorite sermon tapes. (I know, right? Just being transparent, here)

My thoughtful wife encouraged me to just save my own sermons and maybe someone will listen to one of those.  So, I did that. It feels good to let some things go.  (My book library is next and that is going to be a much more savage and painful purge).

Solomon's reflections helped me realize that people have their own dreams, struggles, and memories to make, and they won't be dwelling on old messages...especially ones on plastic cassette tapes:

Ecclesiastes 1:11 "No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them."

Ecclesiastes 2:16 "For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered; the days have already come when both have been forgotten."

It is humbling to think that Evvie's children probably won't even know my name, but it's true. (I don't know my Great Grandparents' names).

But I do hope that I will be remembered fondly by my own children...even without the help of  my favorite sermon tapes, now residing in some landfill in Gentry.

Besides, the greatest sermon that any of us have is the one that we are living...NOW. So, I will focus on my life now, and preaching even better sermons with it,...every day.

Solomon finishes his book on a more positive note.  In time, even the message of a well-lived life will be forgotten, yes.  But not before it helps to "hold life together" for others:

Ecclesiastes 12:11 MSG

"The words of the wise prod us to live well.
They are like nails hammered home, holding life together.
They are given by God, the one Shepherd."

So, better to take the nails of the one Shepherd and build now; better to gently hammer truth and love to help hold life together, than to hope in the spell of a few old cassette tapes, that probably would have ended up in a landfill in Gentry anyway.