Permanence and Poignancy

You are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.  –2 Corinthians 3:3 

Palm Springs has always been an attractive destination.  Though the low desert has grown a ton since I was a kid, the same things that set it apart back then still beckon us today- clean air (most of the time), warm nights, a zillion golf courses and the feeling that your net worth is significantly higher than it actually is.  Palm Springs is still Palm Springs.  But getting there seems a lot different today than it was back then.  Over the past several decades, a series of development booms have created an I-10 corridor made up of seemingly endless housing developments, windmills and retail outlets.  But one thing hasn’t changed.  Make that two things- Dinney and Rex.

For me and every other kid who couldn’t stop asking, “Are we there yet?” it used to be the highlight of the trip.  “Forget the Springs, how soon ‘til we get to Cabazon?”  That’s why I was drawn to an article by Martin J. Smith in LA Times Magazine:

“There’s just nothing unintentional about 250 tons of steel-reinforced concrete fashioned into the shapes of a 150-foot-long Apatosaurus (“Dinney”) and a 65-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex (“Rex”).  Someone had decided to build them, and in precisely that place, for some unfathomable reason. These things happen.  The Watts Towers were no accident, and like the dinosaurs, they had no clear purpose, commercial or otherwise.  Of course, everyone knows about Simon Rodia and his towers – the singular and profound result of one man’s obsession.  But who built the dinosaurs?  And why dinosaurs?  And why way out in the middle of nowhere?  What Claude Bell wanted to do, essentially, was the same thing most of us want to do: make a permanent mark before leaving this world.  But as he and his family told his story, Bell’s attempt to make his mark struck me as particularly poignant.”

The words “permanence” and “poignancy” belong in the same article.  The Bible says that everything is divided into two categories- either something is corrupting or it’s eternal.  Concrete dinosaurs are corrupting.  People are eternal.  Nothing is permanent.  You want to leave a mark?  Invest God’s grace in the lives of your oikos.  Anything else is particularly poignant.

If I’m missing something, please let me know.