Each one of us has a telos, a goal. We carry dreams with us throughout life’s journey, and those dreams reveal our ultimate end. When we listen to the wooing of the world, our dreams focus on earthly gain. These dreams will ultimately perish. After all, there will never be enough time to achieve these dreams. Life is brief.
On the other hand, focusing on God gives us a different narrative. With His eternal perspective, we see a different end to our lives. Everything we encounter will have been pushing us to Christ. Our dreams are secure in Him when He is what we most desire. This temporal arena will end, but our hope is found in what is eternal.
These two perspectives, that of earthly gain versus hope in Christ, show how we will respond to death.
Watch part 8 in a teaching series based on the themes of Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life. These four paintings depict the cyclical dynamics of human life, as signified by the artwork’s titles: Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age. You can view these paintings in person at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
