The Brief Story of Eternity Arthur Stace was not a man that you would have spent your hard-earned money betting on to become a celebrity. Born to alcoholic parents in Sydney in 1885, he lived in grinding poverty. That led to stealing bread and milk and searching for scraps of food in bins. As a teenager, he became an alcoholic, was sent to jail at 15 and, in his twenties, he was a scout for his sisters' brothels. Arthur was 45 when he entered a church one day, probably to get out of the rain and hoping for a handout. The sermon concerned eternity. And, for reasons he could never explain, he immediately gave up alcohol and became obsessed with that word - eternity. Despite the fact that he was illiterate and could hardly write his own name legibly, for the next 35 years he inscribed the word ‘Eternity' on footpaths and doorsteps in and around Sydney. He always wrote in immaculate copperplate and used yellow chalk and it's estimated he did this half a million times. Along the way, he achieved world-wide fame as ‘Mr. Eternity', before his death in 1967 at the age of 83. Only one original still exists, inside the bell of the Sydney General Post Office clock tower, which was brought out of storage in the 1960's. It had been sealed up for 20 years and no-one knows how Arthur had been able to get to it. He inspired many artists (including Banksy) and writers, spawned an opera and even a film by Julien Temple, the video chronicler of the Sex Pistols and The Kinks. In 2000, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up with the word "Eternity" as part of the celebrations for the beginning of the year 2000, as well as being part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, in celebration of a man who became eternal though the use of one word.

I met a lady who shook hands with death and survived to tell the tale of her horror in the hands of a group of highway robbers. She narrowly escaped the afterlife with just scars to show for her near death experience. As she narrated her story which transpired when she was travelling to another state for her sister's wedding ceremony happening that weekend, I felt intrigued by her statement "At The Point Of Death, Nothing Else Matters". It made no sense to me why she would have such utterance on her lips, there are a lot of things that should run through our minds and hearts at such critical points in our lives but she insisted that it wasn't true and just a fictitious lie we tell ourselves to help us feel like we are not selfish not to care about everything we are living behind. She and others who were her co-occupants in the bus ran for 3 hours straight in a forest that was unknown to them. They were barefoot, their skin and clothes torn by sharp forest plants, their breathing raggard but low, making them speak in whispers and taking short breaths, least their assailants may hear them. She stood up and limped to the wash basin where she was to rinse the relaxer off her hair and I could feel the extent of the pain she was in but also her gratitude that she was alive to feel pain instead of lifeless in a coffin preparing for the journey of six feet and beyond. With a sigh, she kept narrating to the stylist and everyone who cared to listen to what happened next. They eventually arrived at a village after exiting the bushes and the villages gave them water to quench their thirst and seats to rest their exhausted bodies. When asked by the villagers what happened to them and why they were so many in the bushes, the only male who still had his shoes on because it was a sneakers volunteered to explain to them. They had gotten to a particular location that divided the two states and had met a slight hold up as buses weren't moving forward.  Since they had to change lanes because of an accident that occured on the highway the night before, they were travelling on a  narrow path that will lead them safely out of the accident zone and connect them to the nearest route to continue their journey, they didn't anticipate any incident and weren't prepared for the assault.  Their saving grace was the quick thinking of the driver when he noticed that all the buses were empty and slammed on the brakes. He raised the alarm for everyone to alight and the sneakers guy who happened to be sitting close to the doors, pushed it open and everyone came down hurriedly. Noticing that their plan of attack may soon fail, the robbers jumped out of the bushes with cutlasses and guns and clubs ready to mutilate and kill as well as instill terror and pain on their unsuspecting victims. Immediately the ruckus started, everyone took off for their dear life amidst screams and sounds of scattered feets everywhere. That was when she tore her skin against a tree branch but barely noticed as she ran for dear life. Sighing very deeply, she told the stylist and her friends that she never once thought about her family, friends, work, money or fiancee because her whole being was channeled towards connecting with her maker on a personal level. She said, it was at the point where she thought her life was over that she knew nothing else mattered except herself and her maker. Even on the run, when death was staring at her in the face and she was unsure if she would even make it till nightfall, she was very sure that she owed those final moments to her supreme maker. In her word's "Forget all of these things we watch and preach to ourselves about how our last days will be because when the time comes, you will see and feel no one but his Almighty presence surrounding you". She didn't die that day and has the scars on her body and in her mind to remind her of it but she swears that the encounter radically changed her mindset. What bothers me is how true this is.. Being human means we have ties to this world, our families, friends, partners, businesses and vocations that we feel highly attached to and assume that we would be spared one last moment with all of them before we leave this earth. Unfortunately we are ultimately selfish during our last moment, seeking reconciliation and peace with the supreme being, asking for mercy and forgiveness upon our eering souls and praying to be granted eternal rest. In the end, nothing else matters but You and Your Maker.

Why did Jesus die so horribly? All have sinned, except Jesus. To God all mortals are worthy of the punishment for sin. Jesus is alive, and only He can forgive sin. Jesus is always faithful and just to forgive us of our sins when we ask Him for forgiveness, but we still need to know what we did wrong before asking. Without the awareness of sin, there is no forgiveness of sin. If a Christian cannot recite all Ten Commandments from memory, then how can a Christian live by God's grace in holiness, being ready for eternity? How can a Christian be ready for eternity without knowing repentance, forgiveness, and living by faith? How can one ask for the forgiveness of sin and repent of sin while ignorant/forgetful of sin? If a Christian does not know what sin is, then a Christian does not know why Jesus suffered and died.

There is a secret to everything, Everyone's secret. Every mammal has its own milk, Even our galaxy has got its milky way, Milk & honey its messengers have rarely seen, Whenever we had it, it was a gift from the Everpresent unseen. We thought we're able enough to produce our own, we usually double it with water & sugar to keep our pockets as lubrified as our eyes. When He denied us the fictitious milk of golden calves, we started harvesting the milk of stray dogs, easter bunnies, our eyes milky with the cataract of money. If you breastfeed your child up to four or five it ain't madness to be locked up in towers, sarcastically publicized, it's throwing his future in the range of his Father's hands. Sometimes a mother's unable to point out a temporary father and even if she did, he doesn't bother, yet the real Father has never denied tears of a child or of his mother. Too often at the end of a life lived in our own sweat and the sweat of others, we count our bars of gold as we were told by the political statistician who kept our heart frozen on doses of ultimate sensation and morphine, too often we discover our bars are milky and their date to be consumed has long expired, that's when we generously melt them and give them to others. If you want your Eternity strong, melt your bars young, before your dates run out give them to Him, give them to the insignificant others... your treasure safely stored beyond the Milky Way.

Have you ever seen the sunrise? The way the sun is rising over the horizon, the way it begins to light and bright the tops of the buildings and trees and then the ground. The way it is bathing everything around in warm and sparkling light, when the sun gives life to birds and flowers, even to people, gives life to everything. I have seen that. I think I will never forget this time, though it was an ordinary April's night. I wasn't sleeping for a really long time, it was four AM. Everybody was sleeping that's why I was sitting in silence. Such silence that is often described in books and movies. This sparkling and sonorous silence meant that something was to happen. Something exiting and great. Suddenly there appeared a strange and weird desire in my mind — to look out the window immediately. I turned around, leaned to the windowsill and looked through the glass. The dark sky was so enigmatic and mysterious, it seemed to be waiting for something. Finally, after a few minutes this Something has come. The dark sky began to lighten and then to colour into blue, purple, lilac, rose, crimson and scarlet tints, like someone above was dripping watercolour drops on it. And then ... the sun appeared. It seemed to be a red gold in the sky. It seemed like everything in this world belonged to the sun, because everything would be bathed in its light and everything would be penetrated with its warm. But the night wasn't over and the day didn't start, because it was the time, and the night has just flown into the day and the day into the night. And while I was watching the advent of light and morning I felt that nothing in this world has bounds, nothing has an end. The trees, the birds, the sun, the sky and the people... everything is boundless and infinite. And we all are living in the eternity forever. So please...one night watch the sunrise.