All in one life time, all in one life time, gone.

Mac and I listen to Ravi Zaccharais frequently. The following quote is one he likes to use in a number of his messages. It really is beautiful, so I took the time to transcribe it today so i could have a record of it and share it with others. It really puts perspective on Christ vis-a-vis our history.

We look back upon history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling. Revolutions and counter revolutions. Wealth accumulated and wealth dispersed. Shakespeare has spoken of the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon. He says, ‘I look back upon my own fellow country men, once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced in the words of what is still a popular song that the God who made them mighty will make them mightier yet.

I’ve heard a crazed-cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that will last a thousand years. I’ve seen an Italian clown saying he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power. I met a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser-than-Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aureoles, more enlightened than Ashoka. I have seen America wealthier and in terms of military weaponry more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people so desired, they could have out-done a Caesar or Alexander in the range and scale of their conquest. All in one life time, all in one life time, gone. Gone with the wind.

England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead remembered only infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep the motorways roaring and the smog settling. With troubled memories and painful memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam and the victory of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one life time, all in one life time, gone. Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen and self-styled imperial diplomatists stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom and in whom and through whom alone mankind may still have hope – the person of Jesus of Christ. The more I look at the saviours of men, the more beautiful the lamb of God looks to me.

Malcolm Muggeridge