The Countrywoman's Claim to Immortality
Story★★★★Anatole France thought he was saying a clever thing when he made fun of the simple old countrywoman who clung to the thought of her own immortality. “Tell her she will live a million years but must die at last — she will still be inconsolable!”
Of course she will be. She does not want a million years of eating and drinking. What she wants, though she cannot express her thought, is some assurance that she was created for something more than eating and drinking. In her heart and mind and soul she challenges God Himself to justify her instinct and her claim to live while He lives, and, as she shares His labours and sufferings in time, to share His victory in eternity.
“Because I live, ye shall live also.”
The point
An old woman's yearning for immortality reveals humanity's deepest hunger—not for endless eating and drinking but for purpose and transcendence beyond the temporal.