Our Life and Hope

I love History, as a subject and as an idea.  When I look at old things, the age of them amazes me.  To think that someone else, somewhere else, many many years ago, crafted, wore, and valued the item I’m looking at is incredible. Mankind is vastly outlived by its legacy. These items are not just items, they are products of an era, and their design and existence reflect the thinking, the fears, and the dreams of the times that produced it. They are a part of the bedrock that produced who we are and what we go through. Great men and women, secondary causes of the purposes of God through history, existed alongside them, held them and crafted them. One item in particular that amazes me and has lead me to praise God for his work, is Charles Spurgeon’s Bible on display in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s library. In it are the very words made of the very ink on the very pages that our Lord inspired the great preacher with, as well as the beautiful and meticulous handwriting of Spurgeon written in the margins of the pages. When I look at things like these, the world around me fades and becomes a crafted vision of the past, where heroes and giants of the Faith and times work to form history. I imagine their fingerprints living out beyond their body, stuck to the silver, gold or wood, fingerprints that are slowly replaced by others.