What Really Lasts?

One of numerous statues to Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
   So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
   You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

Oh the ironies!  Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 55 to say that what really matters are the words of his sonnet—not a monument.  So what did people do?  They erected him a monument!  How terribly human—just cannot resist erecting the monuments to ourselves can we?

Yet what I gain from the Sonnet is that our lives are like the lines of his sonnet.  What we write on the hearts of others is what lasts.  We surely know how the opposite.  The painful truth is that we write the pain of memories into the lives of others—and those lines last. The profound difference is that when we dare to write the lines of love with our life—something happens that sets the other painful lines into perspective.  In fact, the wounds of those lines can become sources for loving others.  They teach us what really matters, what lasts.  And in the process, we too heal. 

Could this be the only monument that lasts, the love of God which writes the lines of love in us because his son died for us?  St Paul wrote:   

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: 

everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 

All this is from God…. 

(2 Corinthians 5:17ff)