Coming and Going

Calvin Coolidge (1824-1933) was the 30th President of the USA. In 1924, he won the American Presidential elections with remarkable ease. The main reason for this was that he posed himself as an opponent of dangerous radicalism. It is said that when he was President a visitor once facetiously asked him who lived in the White House, the place of residence of the American President. “No one,” he replied, “they just come and go.”

Calvin Coolidge gave this reply with regard to the occupants of America’s White House. But this reply applies to every other house in the world, big or small, actually. No one is going to live in their house—or in this world for that matter—forever. Here, they will just “come and go”, like the inhabitants of the White House.

In this world, there is no permanent house. Every house is, as it were, a temporary guesthouse or traveller’s inn. Here, people come only in order to leave. People stay here for a while, but they cannot, despite wanting to, settle here permanently.

People know life, but they don’t know death. People work for years to construct a home of their dreams, only to leave it when death arrives, being sent to the home that God has destined for them in the Hereafter.