The Wonder Of God’s Kingdom

We know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Romans 8:22

About all that remains of the so-called Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are as follows:

• The only remains of the Tomb of Mausolus, built in 350 BC, are now exhibited in the British Museum.
• The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, once the center of the fertility cult of Diana, was probably destroyed in AD 262.
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon grow no more. Babylon’s ruins have been found along the Euphrates River, about fifty-five miles south of modern Baghdad.
• The magnificent statue of Zeus was dragged off and burned.
• King Ptolemy’s famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, in Egypt, crumpled during a fourteenth-century earthquake.
• The Colossus of Rhodes was also destroyed by an earthquake in 224 BC. It was originally a giant hundred-foot statue of Apollo that spanned the harbor on the isle of Rhodes.
• Only the pyramids of Egypt, built between 2700 and 2500 BC, before the time of Moses, have survived the ravages of time.

All of these ancient “wonders” were impressive, to be sure. But none of them—even the pyramids, the only ones still standing—will last forever. Only the things God himself builds last for eternity. That includes the kingdom of heaven, the ultimate destination of everyone who believes in Jesus Christ for salvation. That’s more impressive, more magnificent than words can describe!

Lord, help me not to be too impressed with the things that will not last and more impressed with what will last for eternity.