February 7 is the day Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885 at Saulk Center, Minnesota.

Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. His best known works of social satire were Main Street, It Can't Happen Here and Babbit. Yet, for all his renown and wealth, Lewis died in Rome of alcoholism.

Upon his death in 1951, he was cremated and his ashes sent to Rome's U.S. Embassy for disposition. One morning a visitor noticed a worker on her knees with a dustpan and broom. Next to her was an overturned funerary urn. When asked what she was doing, she replied nonchalantly, "Sweeping up Sinclair Lewis."

If we focus on the words, "sweeping up Sinclair Lewis," we realize the abject futility of the human experience outside of the soul and its relationship to God. This is why the Bible says: "For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. … But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him" (Psalm 103:14, 17).