Record Breakers

As a kid my favourite TV programme was Record Breakers. I loved watching the attempts to see who could lift the most, eat the most, balance crates on their chin etc. And I loved browsing through the Guinness Book of World Records.

I found an old edition of it recently in my dad’s house – from 1986! It brought back many memories. But there is something fundamentally depressing about pages and pages of people who trained and practised to achieve their goal, only for it to be eclipsed. All that effort, all for no avail. No-one remembers (or cares) who could balance the most milk crates on their chin or eat the most frozen lollipops in 1986. Even the athletics records from 1986 are almost all surpassed, and exceeded again and again.

What is true of the record breakers is true of all of us. The writer of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes makes this point:

“There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow” (1:11)

We know our grandparents’ names (maybe just about), but do we know our great-grandparents’? Yet surely they contributed significantly to who we are. Will our children’s grand-children know anything about us either?

Bleak as it is, Ecclesiastes is right. We are so used to placing ourselves at the centre, thinking that the world rotates around us. Yet we are more like footprints in the sand – all trace removed by the next wave – a fleeting imprint that is here for a little while and then gone.

But that ache we feel at the thought of being forgotten is itself a clue. If we were only footprints in sand, we wouldn’t mind the tide.

The same writer tells us: “God has set eternity in the hearts of men” (3:11). We are wired for something bigger. Yet time and death seem to erase it all.

Is there an answer? What do you do with a hunger for eternity when you only have a lifetime? Ecclesiastes’ answer isn’t to chase a legacy that will outlast the tide — it’s to anchor yourself to the one thing that already does.

Meaning and purpose are found, not in this life, but in putting God at the centre of our lives. That’s why towards the end of Ecclesiastes the writer says: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come” (12:1). It is Him we need to anchor ourselves to—unlike everything else in this life, he has withstood the tide.

I’ll never make the Guinness Book of World Records. But Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and he offers to write my name into a more important book—one that death and time can’t erase.

“Nothing impure will ever enter it (Heaven)… but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Revelation 21:27)

That’s the book to make sure your name is in.