[280 words]
What the biggest man-made structure?
You might be thinking the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or One World Trade Center. However, those are all wrong….maybe.
What do we mean by biggest? Tallest? Widest? Takes up the most area? Even the term ‘man-made structure’ is problematic. What if we really weren’t planning on making something, does that count?
If that’s the case, then the answer might just be Fresh Kills, a garbage dump on Staten Island. The site is 4.6 square miles in area and, when operational, had twenty barges carrying 650 tons of rubbish shipped into it daily. At its peak, the dump was more than 80 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty.
It doesn’t ever seem to get into the record books. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to acknowledge the biggest thing we humans have done is a lot of garbage.
Paul did, however, understand this reality;
“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).
We like to brag about our accomplishments but in reality, all we have here is destined for the scrapheap. The greatest thing we get here is isn’t what we have here; it is what we get when we leave here. Our faith in Jesus is the only thing that will matter to us in eternity. Everything else, while seemingly impressive, won’t amount to much more than a big pile of trash.
It the biggest thing in our lives the Lord or a landfill?
Barry Haynes
Hope, AR