ENDLESS HORIZONS
What a Cruise Ship and a King with Baboons Can Teach You About Your One Real Life
Here’s a 10-minute recap of Today’s Sermon!
The Man With the Penguin
A grown man on Facebook — I have never met him — sent me a friend request the other day.
I clicked his profile out of pastoral curiosity.
And right there at the top, in his bio, in the place where you put your job, your family, your relationship with Jesus,
was his life goal.
“Take a selfie with a penguin in Antarctica.”
A grown man, with a job and a calendar, is saving money right now to fly twelve thousand miles to a continent humans were never supposed to live on,
to take a picture of his face next to a flightless bird in a tuxedo who does not care about him.
Who will not like, comment, or share.
Beloved, we have lost the plot.
And the man in Ohio is not even the worst case.
Wait until you see what they’re selling now.
Endless Horizons, Pay Once Sail Forever
Let me tell you about a real boat.
Sailing right now as you read this devotional.
It is called the Villa Vie Odyssey.
The Odyssey makes a complete loop around the world.
Three and a half years long.
Four hundred and twenty-five ports.
One hundred and forty-seven countries.
All seven continents.
And then — hear this — when those three and a half years are up,
the ship doesn’t stop. The ship never stops.
It just starts the loop over.
Forever. Around and around the globe like a Roomba with a buffet.
And the cruise line offers a program called the Golden Passport.
You pay one lump sum up front and you sail on this ship… until you die.
Their actual marketing slogan, on their actual website, is:
“Pay Once, Sail Forever.”
They are selling eternity like a ship bound for glory land.
And the premium tier — listen to the marketing copy on this —
is called “Endless Horizons.”
Endless. Horizons.
Some marketing executive sat in a conference room and pitched, “What if we called it Endless Horizons?”
And somebody else said, “Brilliant. Customers love being reminded that the only thing ending is them.”
Now — here is where it gets really good.
The price of the Golden Passport is based on your age.
The older you are, the cheaper it gets.
Because the math is: how long do we have to feed you.
If you are 65, the price is around three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
If you are 85, the price drops to roughly ninety-nine thousand.
Brothers and sisters, that is the going rate for a kitchen remodel.
And if you are 85 — the cruise line is, with great respect, advising you to make a decision quickly.
They are not saying it out loud. But the price is whispering.
Do you see what they are doing?
They have built a pricing model that quietly, mathematically, with all the warmth of a Florida actuarial table, whispers at every age:
“Time is running out. Buy now while you can still enjoy it.”
They are not selling you a cruise. They are selling you a countdown.
And here’s the thing — it’s working.
The Odyssey sold 270 of its 295 cabins before the ship even launched.
Ten thousand people are in their online community right now, swapping tips about life at sea.
There is a line, and the line is moving.
The Religion Underneath the Boat
Listen. I am not making fun of the people on this boat.
If you want to spend your seventies eating shrimp cocktail off the coast of Argentina, godspeed.
But I want you to notice the philosophy underneath the boat.
It is the same philosophy underneath the bucket list.
The same philosophy underneath the Pinterest board, the vision journal, the “live your best life” coffee mug.
The same philosophy underneath the man in Ohio booking his ticket to Antarctica.
And the philosophy is this:
“The meaning of my life is the sum total of the experiences I collect before I die.”
That is the operating system.
That is the religion.
And it has millions of converts.
But here is what I want you to understand.
This religion is not new. It is not modern. It is not American.
It is three thousand years old.
And one of the most famous men in the Bible already ran the experiment for you.
The King Who Already Bought the Ticket
His name was Solomon.
Son of David. King of Israel. The wisest man who ever lived.
And one of the wealthiest human beings who ever walked the planet.
Before Solomon ever sat down to write Ecclesiastes,
he had already done what every American with a Pinterest board is still trying to do.
He completed the bucket list. All of it.
“I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks… I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well — the delights of a man’s heart.” — Ecclesiastes 2:4–10
Houses. Vineyards. Gardens. Gold. Singers. A harem.
He didn’t put it on a Pinterest board.
He CHECKED IT OFF.
And here’s my favorite detail in the entire Solomon story.
First Kings tells us his ships came home every three years bringing gold, silver, ivory
and baboons.
Baboons.
Not one baboon. Plural. Shiploads of them.
Solomon’s royal fleet would pull into port, the trumpets would blow, the cargo hold would open, and out would come—
BABOONS.
Running down the gangplank.
Screeching.
Biting the sailors.
Why did Solomon have baboons?
Because he could.
When you have a billion dollars a year and nothing left to buy, you import baboons.
Solomon had baboon problems.
That is how rich Solomon was.
And while we’re here — he also had a thousand women in his household.
Seven hundred wives. Three hundred concubines.
Brother was living with a thousand women and still ordering baboons.
Which tells you everything you need to know about his emotional state.
Vapor
If anyone in human history could have proven that experiences and stuff add up to meaning,
it was Solomon.
He was the control group AND the experimental group.
He was the whole study.
And at the end of his life, after the gold and the wives and the cedar palace and the baboons, he wrote a book. We call it Ecclesiastes. And he opened it like this:
“Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” — Ecclesiastes 1:2
Zero stars. Would not recommend.
But the Hebrew word here matters.
The word translated “meaningless” is hevel.
It literally means vapor. Breath. Mist.
The fog you blow on a cold morning that disappears before your next breath comes out.
Hevel is the original Hebrew word for a bucket list.
And then in chapter 5, Solomon writes a verse that should be tattooed on the bow of the Villa Vie Odyssey:
“Whoever loves money never has enough. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.” — Ecclesiastes 5:10
Solomon was not preaching from theory.
He was preaching from a throne of ivory, with a thousand wives, a fleet of baboons, and an empty soul.
If Solomon could not buy his way to enough —what makes you think the Golden Passport is going to do it for you?
The Question Under the Question
Most of us are walking through life asking one question:
“What do I want to do before I die?”
That is the bucket list question.
Solomon’s question.
It is the question the cruise ship is selling you for ninety-nine thousand dollars.
It is not an evil question.
But it is a small one.
Because that question puts YOU at the center of your own life.
And at the end, you will have collected the experiences,
and they will not walk you across the river.
So we have to flip the question.
Here it is. The whole devotional. In one sentence.
“What does God want to do THROUGH me before I die?”
Read it twice.
Not TO me.
Not FOR me.
THROUGH me.
That one preposition will reorganize your whole life.
“We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” — Ephesians 2:10
God prepared things in advance for you to do.
He has had a list for you since before you were born.
And it does not include “stand on a glacier and post it on Facebook.”
It includes a person He wants you to forgive.
A neighbor He wants you to love.
A wound He wants you to let Him heal so you can help heal somebody else’s.
A child He wants you to bless.
A check He wants you to write.
THAT is the list.
And most of us have never even opened it because we were too busy planning a trip to Bali.
What They Will Say at the Casket
I have done a lot of funerals in thirty years of ministry.
And I have never — not one time — stood at a casket and heard a family say,
“We just take so much comfort in knowing he finally got his selfie with that penguin in Antarctica.”
Never. Not once. In thirty years.
Do you know what they say?
“She loved well.”
“He forgave us.”
“She showed up when nobody else did.”
“He pointed us to Jesus until the very end.”
THAT is the bucket list nobody puts on Pinterest.
And it is the only one anybody ever wishes they had finished.
The Villa Vie Odyssey is going to circle the globe until it doesn’t.
The Golden Passport is going to expire when its holders do.
Every Endless Horizon ever marketed will one day be hevel. Vapor.
But the One who made you will still be sitting on the throne.
And He will still be asking the only question that ever mattered.
“What did I get to do through you while you were alive?”
Don’t kick the bucket with your list half-checked and your soul completely unready.
The best is yet to come.
Your Hope Dealer,
Rookie Roberts
Great sermon! Like you, I really don't understand the attraction of baboons! It was a very meaningful illustration of how meaningless things are compared to what God would have you do with your time and talents!