They Shall Perish But Thou Endurest

He went back to look. He is seventy three and he had not been in that town in nineteen years.

Two of the three things he had gone to see were gone. Not derelict: gone, replaced, the place completely reorganized, and the third had been altered so thoroughly that the part he was proud of was inside a wall.

He had not told anybody he was going. That is worth noticing, because it means some part of him knew it might be a private sort of day.

He stood in the street for a while and then had a cup of tea in a place that had not been there either.

And what he felt was not what he expected. He expected sadness and there was some, and underneath it there was something more disorienting: a sense of the ground being thinner than he had thought. As though he had been standing on those buildings without knowing it, and had come to check they were still holding, and found the floor further down than he remembered.

He is not a man who says things like that out loud. He said something to his daughter about the traffic.

You may have your own street. Something you went back to and found gone, and a feeling underneath the sadness that was more like the floor moving.

The garment and the One wearing it

Here is a passage where the psalmist looks at the biggest and most permanent things he can think of and then says what happens to them.

Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.Psalm 102:25-27

They shall wax old like a garment.

He is talking about the earth and the heavens. If those wear out like clothing, then a building in a town you worked in is not an exception to a rule, it is an example of one.

And notice what he does with it. He does not say the heavens were pointless. They are called the work of thy hands, which is the highest possible description, in the same breath as being told they will wear out.

Made by God, and temporary. Both, in one sentence, with no contradiction felt.

You are looking at ordinary wearing out rather than at a verdict on your work. Psalm 102:26 has the work of God's own hands waxing old like a garment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man of seventy three stand in a changed street without concluding anything about his life.

Now let me name the thing under the sadness, because you got closer to it than most people do.

You said the floor was further down than you remembered. That is exactly right, and here is why. Without ever deciding to, you had been resting part of your weight on those buildings. Not consciously. They were the evidence, the place where your years were kept, and knowing they were there had been doing quiet structural work for nineteen years.

And then you went and looked and the evidence was gone.

You are held up by something that does not wear out like a garment. The written word puts the perishing next to thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end, and the Holy Spirit is the floor that was under you before those buildings went up.

The honest half. They are gone and they are not coming back, and the part you were proud of is inside a wall and will be demolished eventually with the wall. I am not going to tell you it might survive.

And I am not going to tell you it did not matter. It did. People used those buildings for decades. That happened, and no demolition reaches backwards.

There is a part only you can do and it is two sentences, said standing up. You name what is gone. And then you name who is still standing.