"Planned Obsolecence"

I picked up a book today that we got as a wedding present. It is "The Mystery of Marriage: Meditations on the Miracle" by Mike Mason. (wow, that's a lot of "m's") Anyway, I think it's a great book, in that it captures the essence of the wonder I feel about marriage. The chapter I came to tonight is on Submission, and one part caught my attention especially. Here are bits and pieces that really struck me as I read:

From one point of view, the whole of life may be seen as a taking away, as one long and painful series of subtractions. We are forever being called upon to pull up stakes, to release our hold upon the things and places and people we have loved and even upon each precious second as it slips through our aging fingers. Our very bodies are like tents, says Paul (2 Cor 5:1), the most temporary of houses, and our whole existence under the sun bears the marks of exile and nomadism...
There is no escaping this fate, no circumventing our planned obsolecence in this world. There is no discipline that will appease it, no faith that will reverse it...Tragically, so large and real looms this specter of unrelenting decay that for many people it is the only side of life they ever see. How many go down to death in bitterness, resentment, and rage!...By waging so pitiful a struggle not to become obsolete, when in reality the whole natural flow of physical life is toward obsolesence, what people really do is to declare a preference for temporal values over eternal ones. What they do, in fact, is to reject the Kingdom of God and its gift of eternal life.
As it turns out, the only way not to reject eternal values is to submit willingly to the erosion of temporal ones.

I think the first reason this passage caught my attention was that it reminded me of Knox, in the author's mention of a "painful series of subtractions." And I thought about how precious our time with our loved ones is, that we can never get it back once it's gone.

But then as the author went on to talk about how people run from the inevitable, I was reminded of how our society fears and tries to avoid death and even the hint of aging. When people have no hope in an eternal life after this temporal one, I guess it makes sense to pursue immortality. But the conclusion drawn from this is chilling. In running after the pleasures of this life in an attempt to prolong it, they are really rejecting the only One who can give them what they truly desire - eternal life.

God, teach me to give up the things I cannot keep, in order to store up treasures that I cannot lose. Give me grace to hold loosely to the things of this earth, to fix my eyes on You and on eternity.