This just in from my “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” files. No doubt most of you, like I, listened to at least some of the music these rock stars performed over the last 40 years. Once upon a time, they were young and firm and beautiful. That's how I remember them, or at least those of them who interested me, way back when I was young and firm and thought of myself as beautiful.
So, when I ran across those pictures, and these, juxtaposing how some of these famous people used to look with how they look today, I was reminded of Scripture's admonitions about how fleeting this life is and how quickly our youth and beauty fade. Not even rock stars can escape it. It reminds me of how, in God's eyes, money, influence, and pulchritude (ah, the pulchritude of youth!) are ultimately meaningless. Seeing these pictures was for me a good, salutary reminder of how I need to keep my eyes fixed on what really matters.
Job 14:2 — “He comes forth like a flower, and withers; he flees like a shadow, and continues not.”
Eccl. 2:1, 11 — “I said to myself, 'Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.' But behold, this also was vanity. . . . Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
Psalm 90:6 — “in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.”
1 Peter 1:24 — “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls.”
James 1:11 — “For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.”
