Years ago I was working in downtown New York and frequently stayed at the Marriott on the Hudson River.
The walk across lower Manhattan to and from my office near Wall Street and the hotel was always interesting but in particular
I was fascinated each day when passing a landmark bar right near where the World Trade Center once stood.
The outside of the tavern had that old-time New York look of 19th century cast iron and weathered wood,
and no doubt many thousands of people had passed through those doors over the decades. When walking back each day to my
hotel you could hear the revelry reverberating from within of voices bragging of their business battles.
Like the TV program CHEERS this is the kind of place “Where everyone knows your name“
and the bartender and patrons fondly joke and jab with each other in a familial way.
One afternoon I was struck while walking past there that the people that once frequented this place from the Roaring Twenties to
the Sizzling Sixties of yesteryear are now all DEAD and LONG GONE.
The friendships, the revelries, the conversations, the old bartender and patrons that once knew each other so well were no longer here –
along with their reputations, status’ and successes. Just like today’s verse in Ecclesiastes, the memory
of them is FORGOTTEN, for as it says in James 1:10 -- our lives are like “The flower of the grass (and)
shall pass away.”
So also are our lives as well! We all are here for a short time like a fog that appears in the early morning and quickly passes.
While we may think we are successful and remembered today - at some point we will be no different than those old buddies in that bar,
our life will be over, and NO ONE will remember us. All that we have thought we accomplished or earned on earth in this life will be
like the mist at dawn and we also will silently pass away.
As today’s scripture says, they have no more reward but there IS a reward for
“The Living” that look beyond this life:
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