“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:13).”
Do you ever feel as if you are just a small link in a long chain - or as Pink Floyd sang, “just another brick in the wall”? We can look at any single name in a large family tree and realize there is a huge web of those who come before or after.
Our names and our accomplishments when measured against the ages of human existence should not give us hope for immortality through the remembrance of others. No, our lives in this world are a mist, a vapor. This is the conclusion that the author of Ecclesiastes wants us to reach about life “under the sun” - that is, life measured apart from God.
Ah, but that is just it. We can only reach such a bleak conclusion if we subtract God out of the equation. Here our attention is drawn specifically to Jesus. Some only think of Jesus as one life of a Jewish man who lived long ago. He lived and died like millions of others. That assessment is true as far as it goes, for He is fully human; yet, it is also true that He is fully God. These titles in the above scripture are used to speak of God in the Old Testament (and in Revelation 1:8 and 21:6), but here they are combined to speak of Jesus. He is not merely one single life that appeared for thirty-some years and then died having become just another brick in the wall of history. No! “Through Him all things were made” (John 1:3), so He was there in the beginning. And He will be there to bring all things to completion (Revelation 21 & 22).
In some ways, then, the end is not so much an event as it is a person: Jesus. He stands sovereign over all history. So, it is only in Him that our lives can really count for something of note. If we try to build a legacy that lasts apart from Him, we will only be doing a fool’s errand. Jesus is the beginning and the end!
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