Ted Kennedy is dead.
Do you remember the period shortly after his death when the media tortured the phrase “The Lion of the Senate,” endlessly discussed his liberal legacy, and the effort by a number of Democrats and many in the media for naming the universal healthcare bill the Kennedy Memorial Healthcare bill or some such thing?
Well, what happened?
Ted Kennedy has been dead a few months, that’s what happened. It’s now Obama’s healthcare bill (as if he would let it be named after someone else) or Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare bill. Harry Reid is currently doing everything he can to make it “The Not Harry Reid’s healthcare bill” but we’ll see how that works out. But it’s not Ted Kennedy’s bill.
How quickly they forget.
There is a lesson in it for us. Our immortality and our treasures are not here. We must not put our life into the things of this world. These things we see around us are the tools we should use to express our love for each other.
A few days after Kennedy died I remember watching a group of men and women on CNN remarking about Kennedy. But they didn’t talk of the man, they spoke about how his death might be just the thing the Democrats needed to affect the politics of the moment in their favor. Kennedy’s death became the hot subject of the moment in the horse race of politics. It’s likely that someone powerful polled the dead man’s name to see if they could capitalize on it for political purposes. Maybe Kennedy would’ve been OK as that was so much a part of what he’d given his life to but it made me sad.
I Googled the latest news for “Ted Kennedy” today and hit upon stories about who’s going to fill Kennedy’s seat.
I take it as a warning sign that we must not seek to gain our treasure here in terms of finances, fame, or power over others. All those things go away.
I don’t know if Ted Kennedy made a good death. I pray he did. But it reminds me that the celebrity, the power, the money are all finite things that don’t follow us.
Matthew wrote: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
I do not want the things important to me to be consumed by moths and rust. I hope my heart is on the right things, the immortal things. I certainly don’t deserve anything more than rust and moths but I pray for more. I pray for more for everybody.
