The glory that was Egypt is now dust

Lord, I come to You with a heart full of thanksgiving, I have seen the swamps and mires men live in, they smooth out a place in the mud, shape it and pack it down to their liking, and they say that this is what You gave them, what You intended for them.
Now, I know that this is the exact opposite of what You intended for us. The swamp is the place we get to leave as we come to live in You. As You told us many times in the Old Testament. The glory of man fades quickly and is as dust under Your feet.
The recent digs in Egypt have underscored this. The recently discovered massive, impressive statue of Amenhotep III made of pink granite, a substance which is indestructible in our eyes, lies in fragments, the largest of which, the head, lies mute, and impotent on it’s side, the beard of the pharaohs ( a symbol of the god-king’s power) broken off.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100228-statue-head-king-tuts-grandfather-found-luxor
On the same site there are a couple of other massive statues which have been reconstructed, they are lumpy ghosts of what they once were. The massive pink granite statue lies in pieces, a puzzle for the conservators to solve, but it is a signpost for us, the Greatest King of Egypt in all of his glory could not build a permanent honor to himself. Instead it lies broken and no longer expresses the magnificence of his reign. How well Shelley put it nearly 200 years ago (Ozymandias, see below). Yet in all this time with the Old Testament, and Shelley for counsel we have not taken this lesson to heart. We constantly strive to build ourselves up, yet if we trust in our riches and in our strength, we will always gather dust as our reward.
Life lies in the riches of Your Spirit, a life lived in love, beloved by You and sharing whatever You bring us. A life illuminated by Your presence.

OZYMANDIAS.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1792-1822

[Published by Hunt in “The Examiner”, January, 1818. Reprinted with
“Rosalind and Helen”, 1819. There is a copy amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s
“Examination”, etc., 1903, page 46.]

My earnest thanks to Project Gutenberg for making this classic work available. Shelley’s works are in the Public Domain, they are listed here.
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s
You have to hunt for them, His work is next to his wife’s writings (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley).

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