I’m a creature of habit.  Generally, I find something I like and I stick with it.  I’ve been using Dove soap for over 20 years.  It’s never failed me… that I’m aware of.  I really had no desire to change.  However, one day, change came.  Due to a series of incidents, I found myself buying body wash for the first time.  I read the bottle before buying it, but I didn’t really read the bottle until later.  Its claims were, let’s just say, “dubious.”

It read, “Dial… 25 hours, infinite fresh.”  Uh, alright… I must have misunderstood “infinity.”  Here, all this time I thought that infinity meant, “for ever and ever, amen.”  Is infinity now 25 hours long?  Did someone not catch this at the “Infinite Fresh” marketing meeting?  

Furthermore, how in the world do they know that someone will stay fresh for exactly 25 hours?  That’s pretty specific.  One day wasn’t enough?  They had to eek out just one… more… hour?  How exactly did they test this?  Did they put a detoxified man in an air conditioned box for 26 hours, making sure he sat still, only allowing him to drink purified water and eat organic foods, so that at 26 hours they could proclaim, “Infinity is dead!”  

Maybe I’ve missed something.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ve read this wrong.  Maybe I need to wash myself with this product for 25 hours straight and then I will become infinitely fresh.

The bottom of the bottle reads, “New clean-rinse technology.”  Forget the clean-rinse!  I want to know how they fit infinity into 25 hours.  That’s some magical new tech.  It’s time machine soap!  I can’t believe I didn’t read about this in the news.  

I fear that many days, I’m losing track of time, more specifically, urgency, when it comes to eternity.  Paul describes the short nature of our time on earth as a “vapor in the wind,” here one second, gone the next.   As a child I didn’t understand this passage.  I do now.  Each year passes faster than the previous.  Wake up, sprint, tire out and sleep… repeat.  

If we are to take the words of Jesus seriously, eternity is just beyond the vapor of this life and we need to focus our attentions on it.  In prayer, we would do well reorienting ourselves to this understanding.  Jesus calls us to center ourselves to His rule in our lives now, in preparation for eternity with, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  It is God’s kingdom, His power and His glory that are “forever and ever, amen.”  

My prayer is that we are looking forward to being infinitely secure in God’s kingdom when the short vapor of this life dissipates.  It may very much feel like we’ve only lived for a short 25 hours before being faced with the infinite.  I pray we find our value in what is eternal.  May His kingdom come and His will be done in and through us.  

Pastor Travis Montgomery