Endurance

So few things in life manage to stay the course and endure for any real length of time. Clothes turn threadbare, shoes fall apart, cars quit, couches break and sag. (I even seem to go through toothbrushes fairly quickly.) On a longer-but-still-not-permanent timescale, empires fall, borders get redrawn, businesses go under, and churches die. Nothing of this world is permanent.

Isaiah 40:8 offers us the one thing we can touch in this life which will last: "The grass withers, and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever." The revealed, inspired word of God -- the writings we bind together as the Holy Bible -- will endure forever. Nothing and no one can ever cause it to fail or disappear. In the 1700s, the French philosopher Voltaire once boasted, "A hundred years from my death, the Bible will be a museum piece." Over two hundred years later, the Bible remains the #1 bestselling book worldwide every year. Why does it endure? Because it is the word of God. Like God Himself, it doesn't change, doesn't get "updated," doesn't require revision, doesn't become irrelevant.

The gospel song bids us "Build your hopes on things eternal, / Hold to God's unchanging hand." His word is likewise eternal and unchanging. We must hold to it as well if we have any hope of our souls enduring eternally in heaven. The works of our hands will crumble, but our souls are immortal. We ourselves will endure forever in either a perfect paradise or a lake of fire. Which will you choose? I urge heaven -- but it can only be reached by accepting the salvation offered by the God whose word endures forever.