Perspective…

I had a great idea for a blog post. I had it written up… I spent time on it…but something went wrong when I pressed the save button. Lost. Gone. The anger welled up inside of me like Bruce or David Banner… take your pick. Lief smash… only I paid good money for this keyboard so I decided against it. I’m a rational hulk.

What did I write you ask? I wrote about England… London and Cambridge. My wife and I made our first trip to the UK this week where I presented a paper at a conference. The conference went well, the presentation went well, the pubs and the conversation was excellent. It’s the technology that won’t cooperate.

Actually, this fits well with my original topic – how puny we are. Walking through buildings that are almost a thousand years old will do that to you. We think our stuff is sooo important – that our issues and our projects are so necessary for the existence of the universe. Today I saw proof that the universe will pass us by. What do we get? 70 or 80 years if we’re lucky? Only to whither away like the grass… to fade like the flowers. Today as I stood among the hulking buildings and the monuments to important dead people I was struck by how temporary we all are. While it may sound morbid – I found it to be a relief. Just think if we did live forever… if we didn’t know that the end was coming sooner rather than later – just think of how full of ourselves we would become. It would be unbearable… we would be unbearable. So today I thought about how our finite existence – our temporary-ness – may just be one of the most profound acts of grace God bestowed upon us. Maybe it’s our finite nature that allows to love, to experience joy, to hold the world lightly, and to make jokes with friends while sitting at an English pub drinking beer. Maybe the true seriousness of life is that in the end the work of our hands doesn’t amount to much – but we do it anyway. Maybe our finite nature is God’s way of saving us from ourselves… lest we become to grandiose in our thoughts and plans.

That’s what I was going to write about but then my computer cras