Living for What Lasts: The Sobering Gift of Pompeii

Most of us live like we have more time than we do. Not in a reckless way. We just assume there will be another season to deal with the thing that matters most. Another year to mend the relationship, to slow down, to finally say yes to what God has been asking of us. We tell ourselves there will be a better time. And then life keeps moving, and the better time never quite arrives.

There is a passage in James that has a way of stopping me in my tracks.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. (James 4:13-14)

A vapor. Here for a moment, then gone. I want to take you to a place that makes that verse impossible to read the same way again.

In Italy there is a city called Pompeii. You have probably heard of it. It is the Roman city that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year AD 79. And that date matters more than most people realize, because it lands right in the middle of the world of your New Testament. Paul had walked the roads of the Roman Empire within the same generation. The book of Acts had been written. The early church was spreading through these very regions. So when the ash buried Pompeii, it buried a living example of the exact world the apostles knew. The same empire, the same streets, the same shops and customs.

Here is the part that still amazes me. The ash that destroyed the city also preserved it. It sealed everything and held it there for almost seventeen hundred years. When it was finally uncovered, what they found was not the usual pile of ruins. It was a city frozen in time. You can walk on the original stone streets and see the ruts worn by cartwheels. You can look at homes with paint still on the walls and frescoes that still hold their color after two thousand years. You can stand at what looks like an ancient fast food counter, with holes in the stone where jars of hot food once sat. You can read graffiti scratched into the walls by real people, election notices, advertisements, even a love note with an insult scratched in beside it. It is ordinary life, held in place so completely you can still read it.

Most of the world we read about in Scripture is gone. Pompeii you can still touch. That is why we take our groups there. When you read Paul's letters to churches in cities just like this one and wonder what it was actually like to live there, you do not have to imagine it. You can walk through it. Paul stops being a figure in a stained glass window and becomes a man who walked streets like these, who preached to people who lived in homes like these.

But there is something sobering about Pompeii that I do not want to skip past. This was a city that had no idea what was coming. They did not understand volcanoes. They saw a mountain. And even with Vesuvius right there in front of them, they opened their shops and went about their day. They made their bread. Actual loaves have been found still sitting in the ovens. People were in the middle of meals, running errands, living a completely ordinary day. Nobody woke up that morning thinking it would be their last. They thought they had time. And in a matter of hours, the whole city was gone.

I do not share that to frighten you. I share it because Pompeii says out loud the thing most of us spend our lives trying not to say. We are not owed tomorrow. Our lives really are a vapor.

Jesus told a story that could almost have been set there. A man had such a good harvest that he decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, store up all his goods, and finally sit back and enjoy himself for years to come.

But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?" So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:20-21)

Notice that Jesus was not trying to scare that man either. He was trying to wake him up before it was too late. He was saying, stop building your whole life on things that can vanish in a single night, and start investing in what actually lasts. The goal was never fear. It was waking up.

And that is really what a place like Pompeii asks of anyone who walks its streets. It clears away the noise and puts a single question in front of you. If today were the day, have you built your life on the one thing that cannot be buried or taken from you? Every decision you make is either moving you toward God or away from Him. The people of Pompeii thought they had tomorrow. We think it too. The strange gift of that ruined city is the reminder that no one is owed another day, and that the invitation to go all in with God is always for today.

So let me ask you the gentle question Pompeii asks me every time I walk through it. Are you living for what lasts? Is there something God has been asking of you that you keep setting aside for a better time? Today is the day. He is here right now, ready to be found.

Father, thank You for this life, and for every ordinary day in it as a gift. We live so easily as though we have endless time, and we put things off, even the things that matter to us most. Would You wake us up to what really lasts. Would You help us build our lives on what does not vanish. I am thinking right now of the woman reading this who has been putting off turning toward You, who keeps waiting for a better time. Would You help her see that today is the day, that You are here, ready to be found. Make us rich toward You. In Jesus' name, amen.

If this stirred something in you, listen to this week's episode of the Hearing Jesus podcast, where I walk you through the streets of Pompeii and what it teaches us about living for what lasts. [Listen here → LIVING FOR WHAT LASTS]