Some years ago, I was TV channel-hopping, when I came across a programme in which three middle-aged men were attempting to crush a caravan by firing old cars into a quarry. It was, of course, Top Gear, and the show went on to bring its presenters fame and fortune. But what will be their legacy?
In a recent interview Jeremy Clarkson said, ‘I think about dying every day. I’ve got an internal clock counting down, and I’ve got about 101,000 hours left.’ As an atheist who believes that this life is all that there is, he’s taken a guess that he will die shortly after his 70thbirthday and worked out how many hours he has left. How sad that after all the enormous energy and creativity of his life, his lasting legacy will be a few books, some DVD’s and re-runs on Dave. As I’ve said at countless funerals over the years, I can’t believe that lives full of love, creativity, kindness and laughter can come to an end without the possibility of an eternal future. They are reflections of the image of God in which we are made. The Bible says that God has ‘set eternity in the human heart.’ The question is whether we will find it.