S5 E21 - The Bubble Room

We took the kids with their grandparents to the Lexington Children's Museum, and the big hit was the bubble room! Bubbles are a lot of fun, but they are for just a short moment and then their fragile shape pops and is gone. Then you forget them, and move on to another bubble or another room. 

Our lives are like the bubble room - here today and gone tomorrow. Short, fragile, and soon forgotten. But we have an opportunity to be remembered by our creator, and to live forever, if we are willing to seek our Creator during our short few years on this earth. 

#SetYourMindAbovePodcast

Transcript

What if I told you that God could be seen in the most ordinary things every day? 

What if I told you that every day, ordinary events could teach us extraordinary eternal truths? Would you believe me? 

 Welcome back to season 5 of the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! My name is BJ Sipe, and I am a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. And I’m excited to share a few moments together with you learning some important lessons from the simplest things. Let’s grow together! 

Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope those of you who are fellow Americans are enjoying your holiday and celebrating the many freedoms we have in this country that we can often take for granted. I also hope that today we are reminded that no nation or dynasty of man is where we place our hope and trust; as Christians, we place our hope and trust in God alone as citizens of heaven. We look to a city made without hands that one day we will live in forever as he will be our God and we will be his people! What a day of rejoicing truly that will be. 

We took a break last week as my parents were in town and I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible before they ventured their way back toward Oregon. During their time with us, we had planned to do several fun things with them and the kids. One of them was a Lexington Legends baseball game early on in the week, which was a big hit! But the highlight of the week for the kids was going to the Lexington Children’s Museum. It reminded me a lot of a place I grew up going to called “the Gilbert House” back in Salem, Oregon. The children’s museum is a place for kids to hands on learn, play, and grow along with all kinds of other children. They had a little bit of everything! They had dress up stations where you can learn about being a judge & jury, or a doctor, or a postman, or a farmer, or a first responder. Being in the heart of Kentucky, naturally they had several life-sized plastic horses for kids to learn how to saddle and pretend to ride. Upstairs was even more exciting! They had a bug exhibit, a fossil section where you dug up and excavated replica dinosaur bones, a paper airplane room where you made different models and launched your planes through different hoops. But by far one of the most exciting rooms for the kids was the bubble room! The bubble room was so neat. They a large bubble wall that you had to slowly lift a pully system to make a literal bubble wall before it popped! They even had an area that you stood on a platform and pulled a bubble up and around your body through a hoop – which proved incredibly difficult to do even for the grown-ups who tried. But where the kids spent the majority of their time was simply making large bubbles from these small handheld hoops that you dipped into a soapy solution. They made bubbles of all kinds of shapes and sizes, with beautiful rainbow colors glimmering here and there as the bubble floated for just a few moments above them. And then, just as quickly as they appeared, suddenly they would pop with no warning and vanish. Bubbles are certainly fun, but one thing they are not is long lasting. Nor are they memorable – I don’t remember any one specific bubble over others that the kids made that day. After a while they all just kind of blur together – they’re just bubbles. 

You know, the more you think about it, our lives here on this earth are a whole lot like the bubble room. You and I, we are the bubbles; and we come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and beautiful colors, don’t we? Every single one of us is unique and beautiful in our own special way, and yet every single one of us also shares the very same characteristics and qualities as people. 

First, our lives are not long lasting and are fragile. Now to a child that might not seem like a truthful statement – I remember being very young and thinking how old people in their 40’s and up seemed to me. But now here I am, knocking 40 in the next 5 years of my life, and it all feels like it happened in the blink of an eye. In the grand scheme of things, and in comparison to eternity, our lives are temporary and fragile. James speaks to the nature of this in the fourth chapter of his epistle. He says in vv. 13-15, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” Much like a bubble, a vapor appears for just a very short moment and then vanishes. Such is the human condition – what is 70 or 80 years compared to eternity? It is but a miniscule blip, a moment in time, here today and gone tomorrow. And much like the bubble, our lives are also fragile. We are not promised tomorrow. It takes just one mistake, one accident, one random heart attack, one false step for our lives to end abruptly. I know that thought can be morbid to think about, but it’s nonetheless true. And since that is true, I would suggest we should think carefully about the condition of our lives right now. Since we are not promised tomorrow, am I in a place where I am ready to meet my maker today? If not, don’t put it off any longer, because you might never be given the opportunity to be reconciled back to God again. 

But secondly, in the grand scheme of things, our lives are not all that memorable either. This might sound incorrect on the surface as well, because don’t we remember countless individuals who did important things throughout history? Well certainly, we know a few select facts about them…but nobody actually knows them. You might know a lot about someone like Goerge Washington, for example, but no one alive today actually could say they knew him. He has been forgotten, moved on from, and only left as a fleeting memory along with everyone else in history. To prove this point, just go walking through a random cemetery at some point and read the countless names of those long since buried and gone. What do you know about them? Nothing. They are forgotten, just names on headstones that eventually all just blur together. This is what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 1. Let’s look at vv. 4 & 11, “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever . . . there is no remembrance of those who came before; and of those who will come after there will also be no remembrance by those who follow them.” Again, this is not a comforting thought to most, but it is nonetheless true. All of us at some point will live out our short and fragile lives, be buried, and soon after be forgotten. I can’t change anything about that; but I can tell you that your name can be remembered by the only one who matters most: your creator. We read in Revelation 3:5, “In the same way, the one who conquers will be dressed in white clothes, and I will never erase his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name before my Father and before his angels.” If you are found in Christ, he will never forget your name. He knows his sheep, and he will give them safe passage and eternal rest as the Good Shepherd. 

My friends, this life is a fragile and forgotten bubble. It’s here for just a moment, and gone and forgotten tomorrow. Don’t waste your fleeting moments serving yourself only to be lost for all eternity. Spend your life seeking and serving the only one who can give us the hope of eternity, and one day when this short life is over, he will call your name and welcome you home. 

This has been the Set Your Mind Above Podcast, season 5 episode 21 – and I’m so thankful that we had this time to grow together! A new episode is dropped every Friday, so be sure to tune in next week.  Also, if you’re able to, go ahead and like and subscribe to the podcast, give us a good rating or most importantly share it with someone else – it would help to reach others that I never could alone.  And more than anything, always remember the following: know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.