Pages

▼

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

“I was once what you are, and what I am you will become.”

I saw Florence in 1971. Two scenes stand out in my memory. One was seeing the da Vinci’s and the Botticelli’s at the Uffizi. That was the highpoint of my visit to Florence.

The other was seeing Santa Maria Novella. In particular, I noticed a sarcophagus bearing the inscription: 
“I was once what you are, and what I am you will become.”

I was not even a teenager at the time, yet those haunting, ominous words were impossible to forget once I read them. They stayed with me ever since.

Believers and unbelievers alike should live with that in mind. Unbelievers should take that as a warning to repent and embrace the gospel. And believers should live in the awareness that someday, someone will be staring down at our gravesite, just as we once did the same for someone else who came and went before us.

As Francis Schaeffer said, How Should We Then Live? 
at

4 comments:

  1. The Puritan5/04/2011 2:33 AM

    Another thing along those lines is actually counting the number of days you have left, basing it on three score and ten. Knowing of course you may not have three score and ten.

    Then, we forget. As Gogol said along these lines: we have a remarkable ability to make everything insignificant.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ANNOYED PINOY5/04/2011 5:54 AM

    John Piper's book "Don't Waste Your Life"

    http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/online-books/dont-waste-your-life

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5/04/2011 12:11 PM

    Have you considered this might be Joseph Smith's tomb???

    Bwahahah!!!

    I read Schaeffer. I agree most secular humanists are inconsistent idiots. I think if I met Schaeffer he would have told me "Contratulations! You're the first consistent nihilist I've met!".

    I still say that he's wrong though. I cannot lie to myself no matter how horrible the consequences are of what I believe.

    Of course you will accuse me of wanting to hold onto my sins as a cause of my denying the "truth". But it's not so. I simply cannot believe your fairy tales. Bultmann said it best. In this world of electric lights and electric razors, we simply cannot believe. I don't think you do at bottom.

    I don't want the anti-religionists to win, because they are insane, but I do think you are wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Patrick Chan5/06/2011 1:15 PM

    Thnuh Thnuh said:

    Of course you will accuse me of wanting to hold onto my sins as a cause of my denying the "truth". But it's not so. I simply cannot believe your fairy tales.

    Who knows what your motivation for subscribing to atheism is. I sure don't.

    But in your comment above you certainly haven't given anyone a single good reason to think atheism is true. Rather you've just given us a strange little rant.

    Well, whatever corks your bottle, I guess.

    ReplyDelete