I’m pretty picky about the graphics I use when I write a blog post. These days I have access to several sites that provide free photos for folks to use in websites, blogs, and other venues. But on my last blog, which I published from 2009 until 2018, I often turned to Google Images and poured over their offerings to find a suitable image to illustrate my post. 

Once I wrote a blog post about my experiences on the city bus in the 50s and 60s. Needing an illustration for it, I scoured the internet in hopes of finding the perfect picture. I looked at dozens of pictures before deciding on the painting of this great red bus from years ago, bus 132.

The post was published before I realized where the bus was headed — to the cemetery! Look closely, and you’ll see it on the front of the bus in big white letters.

Indeed, aren’t we all on the bus for the cemetery?

At the risk of sounding maudlin, life is temporary, and one day we will die. I didn’t learn this from a Gallup poll or a library book. It’s just reality. When we were younger we might have lived as if it weren’t true, but by now we know the truth of our own mortality.

Most of us have pursued life with gusto. We love life. We may be slowing down, but don’t we still live as fully as we can? We relish the relationships that bring us joy. We still seek out opportunities to enjoy life in all its fullness, as if this life is all we’ve got.

But that isn’t so. There is eternity, and that lasts a long, long time.

Our friends Ginger and Charlie taught 4th and 5th grade Sunday school for many years. One day Tom and I stopped by to visit them in their classroom. Ginger pointed out a 1×2 inch paper taped to the place where the wall and the ceiling of the room meet.

She said that it represents our lives, and she held her fingers two inches apart. “That’s all the longer our life is, compared to all eternity,” she said, as she moved her arm in a motion that circled the room two or three times. “We need to live with eternity in view.”

That’s for sure. This little breath of time that we have is really just a shadow anyway. It is to prepare us for what’s next.

We know our bus is headed to the cemetery, but, as followers of Jesus, we know that when it arrives we will meet Him face to face and spend eternity with Him. “Lord, let us live our lives with the joy and enthusiasm that you offered when you said, ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ (John 10:10). But don’t let us lose sight of the reality of eternity.”

 After all, the cemetery isn’t the end of the line for us.

Ginger