It’s All Gonna Burn

You might think “What a title to start the year.” Perhaps I better explain. Today was a day for me to gut my studio. I’ve been doing a lot of work and I’m sort of a “throw and go artist,” meaning, I finish something, throw it to the side and start the next thing. After a long busy year, I have amassed quite a bit of clutter, plus I got a sweet new drafting chair for my table, some new tools and in general it was time to clean. I live in a place where we are allowed to burn trash and so I was burning things. One of the things that ended up on the pile was an old print. My studio is in a basement and it can get a little damp down there. This print was effected by a little moisture and got damaged to the point where I could not salvage it, so it went to the burn pile. As it burned, I had a strange thought. One day it’s all going to burn. From your roughest scribble on a napkin to the Mona Lisa, one day it’s all toast.

I know that’s really hard to think about. It almost sounds sacrilegious, but it isn’t, rather it’s a guideline for our priorities. The Bible says, ¹² If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, ¹³ their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. ¹⁴ If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corinthians 3:12-15 NIV). This speaks to the quality of our work, but there’s more, it speaks to investing our gifts in eternal things, like people and the kingdom. That’s what lasts forever, so as we work, maybe we should make that our focus. Our work may not last forever, but what if the Lord used that work to draw someone into forever. What better purpose could we work toward? This doesn’t mean every piece of work we do has to be evangelistic, or even “Christian” but the more we look to the Father for inspiration the more meaningful and fulfilling our work will be.

This year, let’s make our focus working toward things that last beyond this world.