“What Does It Matter in Light of Eternity?”

Looking up from my iPhone was good fortune. It allowed me to see festive bunting reading “Cheers to 45” that adorned the bus cabin. Mr. Moller has driven airport shuttles for Hertz for 45 years, a fact he shared with pride moments later over the public address system.

The announcement drew applause. Humorous observations of a man comfortable with his place in the cosmos followed, making the journey pleasant. Based on how swiftly he moved luggage from bus to curb, Mr. Moller appeared to be as light of foot as of heart.

As his shuttle pulled away, a thought occurred to me. Mr. Moller had performed the morning’s repetitive tasks multiple times a day for more than four decades, yet still he did them with the purposefulness and lightheartedness of an applicant looking to land the job.

The admirable marriage of consistency and mirth got me thinking about this bus driver’s job, and the one to which I was returning. All things being equal, work done joylessly is work done less effectively, for nothing ever happens in a vacuum.

Someone is always watching, whether it’s an office colleague or a bus passenger, and influenced accordingly. This means that whatever a man’s vocation in life happens to be, what he does is scarcely more important than how he does it.

To be sure, our vocations will not be joyful all the time.  But I think he is right that “how he does it” can be more significant than a person’s specific economic calling, whether it be that of a high-powered lawyer or a shuttle driver.

Then Kerrigan, out of the blue, made a connection to something else, a quotation from St. Bernard of Clairvaux:  “What does it matter in light of eternity?”

Kerrigan concludes ,”Asking this frequently of oneself reminds that all earthly tasks, from bus driving to lawyering, are comparatively small. All that matters in the end is the love with which we do them.”

He comes to the purpose of all vocations–whether in the workplace, the family, the state, or the church– according to Luther:  loving and serving our neighbors!  Many treatments of vocation stop short of this, focusing instead on things like personal fulfillment or serving God, which are true enough, but they leave out the third element.  God has so designed and governs human life so that each vocation brings specific neighbors into our lives who need the specific work of our vocations.  And thus, all of our vocations are arenas for carrying out the Great Commandment:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27).

I am haunted by the quotation from St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whom Luther cited as believing in sola fide (“faith alone”).  What does it matter in light of eternity?”  That question can give Christians much-needed perspective today.

What does politics matter in light of eternity?  Not much.

What does legalized abortion matter in light of eternity?  A lot.

What does having a successful career matter in light of eternity?  Not much.

What does the way I treat people in my vocations matter in light of eternity?  A lot.

What do family squabbles matter in light of eternity?  Not much.

What does my relationship with my children matter in light of eternity?  A lot.

etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

Illustration;  St. Bernard of Clairvaux by El Greco, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons