An insomniac's Psalm 103: Verse 16

". . . for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more."

My grandfather build a large farmhouse around 1920, on a site with two great barns and many acres, and by good providence I grew up across the street. I passed many of my important milestones there. There I learned about friendship, and there I learned about the ends of friendship, and there, too, about the birds and bees. I formed my earliest sense of eternity there. I put my confidence in the very wooden beams and A-framed structures themselves, that they would endure. Now everything has been removed. My mother said it took the wrecking ball two hours to take down the house.

I have several times been back to see the spot, which does me no particular good. I have stood purposely with my back to the place and half expected that when I turned around again, the house and barns and spring water shed and pond would be standing there as before. And with it, my childhood faith in the permanence of things.

Today a graduated living facility occupies the space. The most obscene thing to me is that people coming and going in the parking lot that stands where our pine grove and mud pie-making operation were have no idea who my grandfather was or of anything we did there. For the most appalling thing about the brief agitation of man on the earth is that when he is gone his place remembers him no more.

"There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after" (Ecclesiastes 1:11).

Let a wise man learn what is to be learned from this bitterness.

To read "Verse 17," click here.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.