Part 2: Smoke

Smoke.

Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That's what the Quester says.]
There's nothing to anything-it's all smoke.
What's there to show for a lifetime of work,
a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone? (A)

Everything's boring, utterly boring-
no one can find any meaning in it.
Boring to the eye,
boring to the ear.
What was will be again,
what happened will happen again.
There's nothing new on this earth.
Year after year it's the same old thing. (B)

Then I observed all the work and ambition motivated by envy. What a waste! Smoke. And spitting into the wind. (C)

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I'm tearing up and throwing out with the trash-along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant-dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ. (D)

What does all this stuff tell me? It tells me I have nothing to boast about. Not a thing. How could I boast in something I possess? What manner of possession which will soon be possessed by someone else? I cannot even possess my body! In a little while, I'll lose that too. Nothing to boast in, except this:

For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. (E). I have no interest in giving you a chatty account of my adventures, only the wondrously powerful and transformingly present words and deeds of Christ in me that triggered a believing response among the outsiders. (F).

And everything else is a waste of breath: smoke.

a. Ecclesiastes 1:2-3
b. Ecclesiastes 1:8-9
c. Ecclesiastes 4:4
d. Philippians 3:7-8
e. Galatians 6:14
f. R0mans 15:18
All scripture passages taken from The Message.

Ozymandias - by Percy Bysshe Shelley