The Financial Times had a piece about Frank Gehry recently. Gehry is world renowned architect whose buildings include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. His building definitely stand out. Whether they will stand the test of time is another issue I will let others debate. Gehry commented about the role of a building. “A building refers to its time, to the things it was responding to, the people, the place. It is either useful or it’s not. And sometimes they’re not. The reality of our lives is that you respond to things that become absolute. You react to the problems of the world.” (FT; 7/11/08) You respond to things that become absolute. Like gravity. Like motion. Like God’s eternal laws. Things that do not change with the whim of culture, time and society. We can get caught up in ourselves and our agendas and forget that life is not composed of things. We are not the sum of all. Life is about responding to true values that form the basis for our responses to people and things. It is about forming a building and life that shelters experience and lets us respond in a Godly manner to what enters in. We become useful or not. We become what we are supposed to become or not. The Apostle Peter talked about “putting off my tent” to describe the end of his life. He sought to stir people up “as long as I am in this tent”. (2 Peter 1:12, 14). Our life is a structure existing in a time and place and responding to people and events. We are either useful or we aren’t. We are learning, growing and advancing toward the time when we put off our “tent”. In the end we are temporary. But we have the opportunity to respond to the absolutes, to God and His calling and way of life. Therein lies our only hope of permanence and a life beyond this one.