No Better Than My Cavalier

“Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.” (Ps 49:20 AV)

The writer’s son pens a book entirely with the thought above.  The book of Ecclesiastes is written with the assumption or conclusions as if God does not exist.  It looks at life through the lens of pure secularism.  If God does not exist, then what is the point of life?  All the pursuits of life are explored from the reference of pure naturalism.  If there is no God, then there is no eternity.  If there is no eternal life, then all that we do in life has no real meaning.  This is the understanding above.  Man, that is God’s honorable creation, is no better than the mightiest beast if he does not live in the knowledge of God.  Man was created in the image of God, and to that point, he is the manifestation of the glory of God.  Yet, we allowed sin to enter His creation and have marred it.  We may be held in honor compared to the rest of the natural world, but if we do not live in the reality of God, we are no better than the most majestic beast.

I grew up in the city, so being around majestic beasts happened only when we went to the zoo.  I never saw a beast in the element that elevated his nature to the best it could be.  I never heard to sound of a thundering steed running across a field.  That is until I moved to Kentucky.  Right across from the parsonage was a pasture.  The owner traded in stock.  He would buy young calves, feed them, and then resell them at the stockade.  He had a large turnover of bovine.  However, he also had one lone painted horse among all those cows.  There is a difference between hearing a galloping horse across a pasture than the sound of a horse in a horse show.  It just doesn’t sound the same.  When that painted horse felt like running, it was such a sight to see.  The sound coupled with his galloping was majestic.  Head held high, tail draped out straight, and the sound of the pounding of those hooves was something I could watch all day.  Even though that horse was about one hundred yards away, the sound of his hooves pounding the ground went right through our front window.  The thing is, when it rained, that beautiful painted horse was a muddy mess.  Gone was the majestic sight of a glistering white and brown steed.  Covered in mud and his tail all matted and crusted, that horse was not something to admire.  When that horse passes, it will be butchered and ground up for its parts.  All the majesty it once possessed would be reduced to a lot of Elmer’s glue.

This is Man without the LORD.  He may rise to glorious heights.  He may reign in the highest kingdom.  He may solve the greatest puzzles of mankind or cure all known diseases.  He may go to a distant planet and return unscathed.  Man has accomplished great things.  He is held in honor among all the natural world without any other creature coming close.  Yet, if he does not know God, then he is like that painted horse.  No matter how much honor he may possess in this life, he will rot in the grave just as much.  He will go on in life knowing only his own honor with no thought of what lies beyond.  The irony of it is, the painted horse has no ability to a conjecture of eternity because he does not have an eternal soul.  Yet, Man who is given an eternal soul should naturally think on eternal things.  Yet he does not.  In some way, the painted horse who lives to his fullest potential and then dies is more honorable than Man who lives according to what he thinks is his potential yet falls short in not living with eternity on his mind.  If we do not live in the knowledge of God, we are no better than one of those cows I saw every day who had no idea the butcher was waiting for him.