"Fratres! Three weeks from now I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line. Stay with me. If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled; for you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!-- Maximus (Gladiator)
Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity."
There's a lot in this quote… really in the last 8 words… and many places to go with it. In a quick search of that phrase I found this post where someone talks about it in respect to Colossians 3:2 -- Christian Pilgrims ... but I'm going another direction with this :)
Of course, what Maximus says is obviously not perfect. He is speaking to soldiers on the edge of battle: he cannot really promise them "Imagine where you will be, and it will be so." Some are going to die, some are going to be maimed. In fact, in the movie itself Maximus is sold as a slave after his family is killed… but that's not my point.
I thought of this quote during church today… don't know exactly when (one of those random things I sketch in the margin…)
What I do know is that in my mind I connected it to a completely different bible passage than I ever have. What jumped to mind was 1 Corinthians 13, yeah, the love chapter:
Here's verses 1-3
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
This is a kind of depressing way to look at the awesome quote from Maximus… but it's true. What we do can be completely, utterly unimportant eternally if it is not done of love. It can echo off the walls like a gong, but be just that, a sound, a reverberation, an echo. Personally, I want to live for more than an echo in eternity… even an eternal echo, since it is an echo's nature to be quieter with each reflection anyway.
Everything in this life will pass away. Our track record of tithed time is not what our eternities are about. Our glory in battle is not what will define our eternity, but the love God has for us, and how it bleeds through to others, will.
The only thing that matters in this life is how we love. The charge, the greatest commandment given us as God's creation is to: "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt 22:37,39).
That is our purpose, to love God and then to love others. Christ is our image, our example to do so. What we experience of Christ is what we truly know of love. So, to pick on Maximus again, where is the echo, really?
1 Corinthians 13:12
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."
Wow… that's awesome! Wait… "now we see in a mirror dimly… then I shall know fully," where's the echo? This life is the echo, this life is the shade. This life does not echo in eternity but becomes the reality of the reflection it is. If in this life we come to know Jesus as our Savior, then we shall fully know Him for eternity. In this life we can see and know so much of who God is and all His amazing wonders: but then we will know fully. Then we shall meet God face to face.
That doesn't sound like an echo to me, that's the whole orchestra and choir :-)
I always like how you piece together quotes and imagery to get across your point(and Gladiatior ftw). The last paragraph especially. Reminds me of the Last Battle, where heaven is Narnia(and England) but a greater, realer version, and as you go further up and further in, it just gets better and better.
ReplyDeleteAnd on love. Love is something that I've been struggling with for a long time- in that I find I do a lot of good things, but not out of love. Maybe to seem good or to do what is right, I may do what looks like love, but isn't. But it has to come from God. He loved us first- gave his whole self for us. Even the ability to love.