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The deaths of Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall: An Ash Wednesday reflection on what matters most in life · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, and welcome to the Wednesday, February the 18th, 2026 edition of Dinnison Forum's Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's Daily Article is written by friend and CEO Dr. Jim Dinnison.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The Reverend Jesse Jackson described by the New York Times as America's most influential black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama died yesterday morning at the age of 84.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He was hospitalized last November with a severe neurodeginative condition.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: His family said he died peacefully.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Reverend Jackson was with Dr. King when he was assassinated in 1968, eventually formed the National Rainbow Coalition and ran for president in 1984 and 1988.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Both times he secured millions of votes in the primaries and delivered speeches at the Democratic National Convention that electrified those in attendance.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2000, President Clinton bestowed on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Another death making headlines this week was the passing of famed actor Robert Duval at the age of 95.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He was especially known for his roles in the Godfather, the Godfather part 2, Apocalypse now, and Tinder Merces, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He also starred in the TV miniseries Lundsum Dove, his co-star Tommy Lee Jones said after his death, even though I have lost a friend, Bob's work will be with us indefinitely.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate his kind tribute, but let's think about his words for a moment.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The 86-year-old actor Ian McKellen recently told an interviewer, quote, "...I have accepted that I am not immortal."
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, it is vital that you and I accept the same fact for reasons that reveal what matters most in life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Even if Jesse Jackson had been elected president of the United States, his earthly work would not have been immortal.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: As President George W. Bush noted in his president's day tribute to General George Washington, our first president's humility in stepping down from office helped define that office.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Washington also built a mansion in Mount Vernon that I and millions of others have toured.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: However, neither the nation he helped birth nor the mansion he constructed will stand forever.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Robert DeVal likewise acted in some of our most iconic films and will be seen in them long after his death, but his films will not live forever.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a time when we understood the fact of our mortality better than we do now.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Susan Wise Bauer reports in the great shadow, a history of how sickness shapes what we do, think, believe and buy, we are only four or five generations removed from a world where most people, most of the time, died of an infectious disease.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: As examples, she discusses plague,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: smallpox, typhoid, influenza, polio, tuberculosis, dysentery, scarlet fever, cholera, measles, and malaria.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that medical sciences defeated most of them does not make us any less mortal, a lesson that the COVID-19 pandemic should have taught us.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There was also a time when we understood the temporality of our world better than we do now, but as I noted yesterday, materialism has convinced many that this world is all there is, rather than using this life to prepare for the next, we ignore the letter and focus my
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He could take us deathlessly from this world to the next, as he did with Enoch and Elijah, but he chooses to allow our bodies to die in part to remind us of our finitude, in the face of infinity, and our mortality on the precipice of immortality.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When we die, we obviously have no agency by which to determine what happens to us next.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: At death, we are like a patient under anesthesia.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: What happens to us depends not on us, but on those who have the power over us, we no longer possess.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: This fact should lead us to trust God, not with just our lives beyond life, but with our lives in this life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: SES Lewis noted in mere Christianity, humans were designed to depend on God as the petrel on which our car runs.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Accordingly, Lewis wrote, it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself because it's not there.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no such thing, in quote, how then are we to live most effectively for eternal purposes?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the answer for my own life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Much less for yours.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The Jewish philosopher Martin Booper observed all journeys have destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: With regard to God's omniscient purposes for his people, plans are finite and fallen minds cannot fully comprehend.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would guess that Paul considered the individuals he won to Christ during his missionary journey to be his most lasting legacy.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: His letters were task theology, written to specific congregations and people for specific purposes, but it was these letters that became his global contribution to God's eternal kingdom.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I would also guess that John thought his public ministry was over when he was exiled to Patmos.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He had written a gospel and three letters, so he presumably had no regrets.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Accordingly, as we learned from Revelation 1 verses 10 through 20, when he was worshiping Jesus in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, he had no idea he would receive the revelation that completed the New Testament.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Our Father will lead us into our most impactful lives if we leave the choice with Him.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Every moment spent in His perfect will is obedience that echoes in eternity.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: If we choose to measure success in this world by significance for the next, and we ask Jesus to make our choice a reality, He will always enter our prayer.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: On this Ash Wednesday, as Christians around the world begin a season focused on Jesus'
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We can join them in contemplating such sacrificial love, and we can respond by committing our lives to serving and glorifying such a Savior.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: To this end, we can pray with Martin Luther.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I am your sin.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You took on you what was mine, yet set on me what was yours.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You became what you were not that I might become what I was not."
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: How grateful are you for such grace today?