Today I am grieving a loss. My TV, medium of movies, Nintendo and the centerpiece of our living room, refuses to turn on. I inadvertently set the TV on it's own power cord and over time, it crushed the power cord, leaving the TV unable to get the power it needs to turn on. While that provides an interesting metaphor by itself, I think today of the fact that nothing lasts. One of these days, something would erode and happen to end the TV. All of our stuff will one day break down. Even P.K. Dick, science fiction author, envisioned a world surrounded by kippel, a slang term for broken down garbage that seems to reproduce itself. Everything breaks down.
I think of illnesses, injuries and the effects of aging, and realize that I am breaking down too. My cells are reproducing near-perfectly, but the little imperfections are a ticking clock toward my body ceasing to function. Reading the persecution and suffering that the psalmist has experienced, we know that things are temporary. So if the things of our age are temporary, what do we focus on?
One classical answer would be to ignore the things of the world and dwell instead on an immortal, imperishable spirit/soul that will escape the material world. This, however, will not do. Frankly, it's not a Biblical response. To save the world, God did not provide an escape from it, God entered into it through His Son Jesus. Ultimately, focusing on our soul apart from the body is a self-centered exercise. In the face of wickedness and decay, the psalmist directs us toward God.
The psalmist focuses on the only truly eternal Person as the source of salvation from decay. "Save me, for I am yours," is the cry. God's promise to fix our problem (sin/death) is one that goes far beyond the psalmist's life- this psalmist doesn't know the promise of resurrection.
But you do. The promise of resurrection is born in Jesus Christ and continues even to this day. One day, we will not decay. The future of God's world is not kippel but imperishable. For that day, I hope and I hope again.
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