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January 10

Napoleon was visiting the Louvre gallery when a painting caught his eye. He said to the director of the Louvre, Baron Denon, who was accompanying him, “That is a noble picture, Denon.”

“Immortal,” was the reply.

“How long,” asked Napoleon, “will this picture last?”

Denon replied that with care, it might last five hundred years.

“And how long,” said Napoleon, “will a statue last?

“Perhaps,” replied Denon, “five thousand years.”

“And this,” replied Napoleon, sharply, “—this you call immortality!”4

Five thousand years is a long time for something crafted by man, but hardly a long time by God’s standards and certainly not immortal.

In 2 Peter 3:8, we read: “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” Time and space merge with God, and the immortality of the human soul is also timeless.

Peter in his first epistle amplifies this thought as he ponders the love of God to you and me.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials (1 Peter 1:3–6).

Living for immortality.