This summer my name is going to travel farther than I could ever carry it on my own.
Some will say something I’m cautious about every time I hear it: “You’re famous now!”
I’ll smile and thank them, but the words never quite sit right.
Underneath I’ll remind myself of an ancient anthropology—a truth about what we are—that can be reduced to this word: hevel.
It’s a Hebrew word similar to our words for “breath,” “smoke”—”vapor.”
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes had a similar word for everything under the sun: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” (Eccl. 1:2).
He wasn’t saying this world is worthless. He was reminding us this world does not last—that you cannot hold it, that it slips through the fingers like water, that everything about it evaporates, and evaporates quickly.
Hence, a byline is vapor; a headline is vapor; a name in print is vapor. All objective life is a vapor, including my own
So when the attention comes, I will not pretend it is nothing. But I will not pretend it is everything, either.
Any spotlight on me is a spotlight on a man going to die. Fame does not pause the funeral, and it adds nothing to what a funeral is really about.
I do not say this to be morbid. I say it because death is the most clarifying fact of life.
What we all really care about does not make headlines. It’s found in the subjective relationships that give life meaning, purpose, and joy—the other subjects, the other whos who listen, inspire, encourage, model, motivate, and sacrifice for you.
For three weeks I was as useful as dust, and someone stayed beside a hospital bed that gave her nothing back: a body that did not know her, a face that could not find her name. There was no version of those weeks where staying paid. But she stayed anyway. I have never been loved more clearly than in those weeks when I couldn’t even know it.
And if no one ever stays at your bedside, I believe there is a God in heaven who stays—who showed us what perfect relationship is in the life of his son, Jesus Christ, and offers it still.
Thus, the measure of a life is not whether the world applauds, but whether there was anything beneath the byline that could be loved. The test isn’t whether someone says “That man mattered,” but “That man mattered to me.”
It is in relationship—with God and neighbor—that a human life is made to mean anything at all.
This is why, after considering everything this life had to offer, the Preacher came back with a concise conclusion:
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (Eccl. 12:13).
Not build the platform. Fear God. Keep the commands when no one is reading, and keep them when everyone is. Why? Because obedience is how we hold our relationships.
Fear God—the line drawn upward, the relationship kept. Keep his commandments—and what were the commandments ever for, but love of God and neighbor? There is the line drawn outward. Vertical and horizontal. He did not end with a rule. He ended with a relationship, and the way you keep it.
A byline cannot love anyone. A headline visits no one in the hospital. The name in print does not show up at the funeral. Only other people do—the ones you actually knew—and the God who knew you first.
So I am writing this before the attention arrives, on purpose. I want it on record that I knew what the writing was before the world told me. It is exciting vapor, the kind the Lord is letting me breathe for a moment.
And I will enjoy the breath. Then I will go back to the only work that was never vapor: fearing him, and loving them.
The objects end at the grave.
The subject lives on.
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