Isn't life short?

I have always loved history and historical artifacts! I collected stamps as a kid, enjoy getting my hands on old books, once wrote a book on my family history, and get a kick out of scrounging for old bottles when I scuba dive. To hold something from yesteryear in your hands helps the past to come alive, and gives you a sense of your heritage.

Today I went out with a buddy from church on my first metal detector hunt. I found a penny from the late 1890s. It's not worth much, but it's cool to hold something like that in your hand and speculate on how it got there and what life was like back then...it seems so long ago after all.

The more I thought about it though, the more I was reminded how short history actually is and how fast life flies by. Perhaps a century from now someone will unearth a coin I dropped and wonder what it was like for me to live at this point in history. A century really is not that long though; only a life span and a half or so. All of history is really just a fleck of time sandwiched between two eternities. The real adventure begins on the other side when we expereince God in all of his fullness and enjoy eternal life with him forever.

Finding things from the past is cool for sure and helps us appreciate our heritage. But the future hope that a Christian has is infinitely cool. "The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son." Rev. 21:7