February 22, 2005

Ozymandias Has a Word For Us
by Pastor George Van Alstine

Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest poets of the English language, was a contemporary of Napoleon; they died within a year of each other (1821-2). Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in 1798 captured the public’s imagination. Many European scholars and archeologists visited ancient middle-eastern sites and published their journals, complete with paintings of the great pyramids and other fascinating ruins. Mysterious cultures and exotic peoples from long ago came alive in the popular imagination.

Shelly had all this in mind when he wrote his poem “Ozymandias”:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
...nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Last Sunday, I was explaining Abraham’s call, described in Genesis 11:27 through 12:3, to our junior Sunday School class. With a map in hand, I asked, “Can you find Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham’s original home?” There it was, right where the Tirgis and Euphrates rivers come together, just west of the modern city of Basra in Iraq. I told the kids about the high city walls, the immense statues, the beautiful carvings, and the impressive culture of the metropolis Abraham had called home. Now,

“...nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Except for the occasional carcass of a wrecked tank, or a marker that troops from one side or the other in the recent conflict died on that spot, the site of Ur of the Chaldees is empty.

Kingdoms come and kingdoms go. A few years ago Saddam Hussein built proud statues in his own honor. Today, it may be Uncle Sam who stands like the proud victor Ozymandias. Tomorrow, it may be some fanatical Shiite Ayotolla. But the story of human history is that all human powers ultimately succumb to the sands.

Daniel, a Jewish slave, boldly stood before the great King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (the ruins of which are also under the sands of modern Iraq), and said of his God
“His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his sovereignty is from generation to generation.” Daniel 4:3)

The God of Creation looms over all the fallen statues, of Ozymandias and Nebuchadnezzar and Sadam Hussein. We need to be careful not to build our own prideful statues, because they too will one day bite the dust. Our knee should bow only to the one true God.