Cultured Views

Eternity

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That picture at the top of the page is the symbol of my home town - the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney Australia. Look at word blazing across…’Eternity’.

This is a photo of the bridge on New Years Eve 2000 and the bridge was afire with pyrotechnics for the huge celebrations that make, in my opinion, Sydney THE place to be for New Years Eve. Each year a different word lights up across the bridge and in 2000 it was ‘Eternity’ and it was a tribute to a man who, for many years, was an enigma to Sydneysiders. The man was Arthur Stace.

For 37 years, beginning in the 1930’s, a word was scrawled in elegant copperplate writing in chalk on the pavements around the city of Sydney. It appeared all over the city, at various times of the day…’Eternity’. Just that one word. No-one knew who was writing the word and for years newspaper editors, writers, Sydney people, speculated over who the mysterious writer was.

In 1956 the mystery was solved when a Sydney Baptist minister noticed an elderly man writing the word in chalk on the footpath. Arthur Stace was born in 1884 to impoverished alcoholic parents. His childhood was one of neglect, hunger and frequent run-ins with the law. As an adult he became homeless and alcoholic, and during one of his many appearances in front of a magistrate he begged the Judge to put him away. He had lost all sense of ‘being’, was losing his mind due to the years of alcohol abuse and had lost all hope for himself. The Judge refused and gave him ‘one more chance’.

One day Arthur called in for a free meal at one of the soup kitchens that were set up for the many down and out in the 1930’s and he saw a group of well dressed men, on asking who they were he was informed that they were Christians. He was impressed and decided to give their way of life a try. From this point his life changed.

He attended an evangelical sermon soon after and one word stuck in his mind ‘eternity’. He could not get thie word out of his head and claimed that God was now directing him to spread this message…’Eternity’.

So, for the next 37 years he set out before sunrise everyday and proceeded to write his one word message anywhere and everywhere across Sydney, with God directing him. He and his simple message of hope became an enigma that remains to this day even though the man and his word are known and linked. He died in 1967. A simple plaque was erected in his honour in Sydney, but, I feel the greatest tribute came on New Years Eve in the year 2000. When his message of hope and eternity was blazened in letters of fire for all the world to see.

‘Eternity’.

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