The poet and Dean of St Paul’s, John Donne, kept an open coffin by his desk. It reminded him constantly of the fleeting time he and indeed all of us have here on earth. Not many nowadays would choose so insistent a reminder of the brevity of human life but we have to take it into our calculation. Whether we are in the business of planting trees or squandering the limited supplies of oil and ores under the surface of the earth, we have to recognise that some of our activities will shape the daily lives of those who follow us.
Men and women have thought about this since they first plucked berries off the bushes and speared aurochs to up their calorie intake. When life had become somewhat more civilised the Romans took a saying of Hippocrates and turned it into an epigram: Ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long; life is short. We have to make the most of the time we are allowed and it may just be that something we do or say will live on in other people’s minds or in the records.
The psalmist was aware of this: ‘As for man, his days are as grass ... For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.’ (103.15,16). Our days are like ‘a shadow that passeth away.’ Whether we take the view that we are the fortuitous result of an inexorable process that brought forth the seas and mountains, the dinosaurs and the genes, or whether we conclude that there is a maker and a purpose bringing a plan to fruition, we cannot avoid the fact that we are short-lived creatures in an immeasurable setting of space and time.
The psalmist, Donne's poetic predecessor, thought about it and came to a robust and comforting conclusion. 'The Lord is compassionate and gracious, long-suffering and ever faithful.' In our generation we must give the issue at least as much thought as he did. It may not lead us to install the alarming token favoured by our metaphysical poet 400 years ago. It may, who knows, lead us to the conclusion that that purpose has been revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
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