Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [88]
Of course, the improved weather might have tainted my expectations. My hopes were expansive, for despite fears to the contrary, winter had ended after all.
As if to combat the feelings of seasonal optimism, Pastor Maddock chose to begin a five-week series on the book of Ecclesiastes.
Pastor Maddock was a towering man. He had a booming voice but rarely employed it. That was what I liked about him: For all his potential powers of intimidation—height, sonorous voice, extensive knowledge of Scripture, among others—he taught rather than preached, mitigating his passion with a kindhearted professor’s concern. It required conscientious effort on his part to speak slowly and gently, with words that would not impress his congregation, as he disapproved of their adoration of ministers. And this was a congregation that very much liked to be impressed.
That Sunday he concluded his sermon by reading from Scripture: “ ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun… . There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.’ ”
He took off his reading glasses and set them on the pulpit ledge. “Listen to me, people: If you don’t believe in an afterlife, and all you have is—at most—a good eighty years on this earth, then your life is so small in proportion to the great expanse of space and time, it might as well not have happened at all. We don’t have to think in eons to see proof of this. Each generation forgets the preceding.
“Recently, my wife and I visited Civil War battlegrounds while vacationing with friends. We stood there overlooking this beautiful field, trying to imagine the tragedies that took place on the very same soil and not that many decades ago. Now, like many of you, I have mental pictures of this war that transpired before I even existed; I have memories of a thing that happened before my time. Who hasn’t seen a Civil War documentary? Or read a Civil War story? Or seen a Hollywood film that portrays the conflict in one way or another?
“We may commemorate the Civil War in books and films, but both are frequently colored in a romantic light, washed in a nostalgia for a lost time. The specific story of each boy, father, and brother, the specific strife of each wife, slave, or child, is lost, buried, as each generation forgets a little more of their parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ stories.
“ ‘There is no remembrance of men of old,’ Solomon said. ‘And even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.’ ” Pastor Maddock paced the platform slowly. “Folks, we will pass from this earth, and this earth will forget us. Oh, we may be remembered by our family and by their descendants, but for how many generations? And even if you are remembered, you will be known only by a name on a family tree or by a single accomplishment or, worse, a single mistake.
“Yet that is not who we are. We are more than a single accomplishment. We are more than the accumulation of mistakes. Something in us craves to be recognized, to be seen and heard—and, most important, to be affirmed.”
He walked to the end of the platform, wiping his forehead with the purple handkerchief he’d pulled from his front pocket. He perspired as if the sermon required strenuous physical exertion.
“This desire to be known is all around us.” He folded the handkerchief back into a square. “Go home and turn on your television. You’ll find men and women crawling all over themselves to be the best, the most honored, the most awarded.You’ll see teenagers who can’t sing their way out of a paper bag standing in line for hours to make fools of themselves in front of judges on national television, all for that chance to be seen by the millions, even for just those fifteen seconds of fame.
“But folks, even the ‘immortality’ of fame cannot preserve the life of a man or woman forever. Who knows the name of the man who erected the