Give Me Immortality And That's An Order!
Chinese archaeologists recently discovered a set of wooden slats in Hunan province recording an order from Emperor Qin Shihuang (who died in 210 BC) mandating a nationwide search for the elixir of life which he felt would alone provide him immortality. Also discovered among the 36,000 messages were replies from perplexed local officials who were embarrassed at their failure to meet his demands.
Emperor Qin's quest for eternal life was well known: He was responsible for the massive underground mausoleum in the northern province of Shaanxi filled with nearly 8000 terracotta soldiers built to protect him in the afterlife. The Qin dynasty -- notorious for its book burnings and executions of literati -- laid the foundation for China as the unified nation that has persisted for two millennia.
The Emperor's obsession with immortality and the COMMAND that it be brought to him were doomed from the start precisely because eternal life is the gracious GIFT of God, promised to all who simply receive it. Sinners that we are, we cannot demand, and we certainly can't command, anything from God.
In truth, all we really deserve is condemnation! However, the Apostle Paul declares in 2 Timothy 1:10 that God's saving grace "has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel."
Getting Your Digital Life In Order
Tim Herrera with The New York Times reports:
You’ve probably thought about what will happen to your finances, your possessions and maybe even your real estate when you die. But what about your Facebook account? Or your hard-drive backups?
For the past two decades, most of us in the modern world have gradually shifted our central living space online. That’s 20-ish years of documenting our real-life experiences while also creating entirely new versions of ourselves in countless places online.
These digital lives are basically immortal, so you may as well figure out while you’re still alive what will happen to them after you’re gone.
Here's what you should know about the websites and services that offer help:
Whom do you trust to mind your central online presence after your death? That’s probably the person you want to be your Facebook legacy contact.
This person will be able to write a post that will remain at the top of your profile, update your profile photo and respond to friend requests. You can also allow that person to download an archive of your public activity (including posts, photos and “likes”), but he or she can’t read your messages, so your most intimate secrets will be safe.
Alternatively, you can set your account to delete everything once Facebook is notified of your death.
Google lets you choose up to 10 people to be the executors of your account once you die or your account becomes inactive via its inactive account manager feature.
To set this up, choose an amount of time between sign-ins for your account to be designated “inactive.” Once that threshold is met (for example, you don’t sign into any Google service for a certain number of months), your chosen contact will get a prewritten email from you with, presumably, your wishes for your account.
Twitter has no equivalent to a legacy contact or a way to plan for your online data after your death. It does, however, let a “verified immediate family member of the deceased” delete your account if that person can provide your death certificate and other official documents.
Should the digital footprint we leave behind really be a point of great concern? What possible difference will that make to you once you’ve died? But the condition of your eternal soul will make a difference, an eternal difference.
What the New York Times will never publish is an article entitled, “Are You Spiritually Ready for Your Death?” The world thinks we should be more concerned about our digital lives than we are about our spiritual lives, about things that don’t really matter than things that do.
Don’t be so foolish! Flip your worries!!
"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33).
Grace Rewards Late Arrivals
Lance Edwards reports:
When Scott Dunn recently awoke from the medically-induced coma he'd been in after getting into a car accident, he was heartbroken after realizing he'd missed his high school graduation.
So his classmates gave him a do-over.
Graduation for the students of East Juniata High School in McAlisterville, Pennsylvania, had happened on May 25, according to ABC affiliate WHTM. Dunn had gotten into a serious car accident on May 22 and was kept sedated until a week later, WHTM reported.
After the school's principal got word that Dunn was recovering and released from the hospital a few days later, he reached out to the teen's family and told them the school "wanted to do something special for him."
That "something special" happened this past Tuesday, when more than half of Dunn's class came back to recreate the original commencement ceremony just for Dunn, according to the school's principal Benjamin Fausey.
. . . Dunn got to lead his classmates in a procession to "Pomp and Circumstance," Fausey said, adding that after brief speeches, Dunn was called up to receive his diploma. As he walked across the stage, the other graduates erupted in applause and cheer.
No matter how late we come into God's service, no matter how little we are able to accomplish for the Kingdom of God compared to others, we all receive the same promise, the same gift of eternal life. The lowliest and the latest of God's servants is promised all of the "pomp," and all of the "circumstance" of an abundant entrance into Heaven.
In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who hires laborers to work in his vineyard. Some are hired at 9 am, others at noon, and still others are hired at 3 pm and 5 pm. Jesus then explained, “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
"But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” (Matthew 20:8-15).