“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure”. -Psalm 39:4
It’s uncomfortable isn’t it? This passage was brought into my mind a lot today. If you knew the number of days you had left to live, what would change about your life? And if you knew God was going to take you away early and your days were few, would you be excited or sad?
I have been thinking a lot about this quote from “The Greatest Thing in the World” for a few weeks now. It’s been so on my heart, I can’t escape it. “We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow. Why do you want to live tomorrow? It is because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back. There is no other reason that we should live on than that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live, because to live is to love.”
The Lord has blessed us with a lot of love in our lives. “He places the lonely in families”. We have each other. How beautiful it is to see people who once were isolated, hopeless, and in all kinds of bondage loving one another, full of life, and being conformed to the image of Christ. There is really nothing like it. I only wish I could express the love and affection I have for all of you, and the joy I get just from seeing you all at the office every day.
But it’s almost a paradox. How easy it is to forget the fountain of all life that gives us all of the love we have in the world, who makes life truly worth living.
I realized today, to be very honest and real with you all, that I have been running too hard, and not slowing down to be with Jesus enough, and it was a breaking point for sure. It made me ask the question, if God were to for some reason take me home early, would I be happy about it, or would I be disappointed? Would I be willing to readily give up “all these beautiful things here in life”, and remember that I am only a pilgrim here? Do I love the Lord more than I love anything or anyone else, and does my daily thought-life, the way I spend my time and my money actually reflect that? I want it to.
And when my last days are finally numbered off will I look back and say “I have wasted it”? Will I have done all that I could to leave something of value behind for the people I love most? Am I bearing fruit that will last? Am I investing in people who really want to know God, or am I throwing “pearls before pigs”? Am I doing everything I can to honor you all and be the friend that you all deserve? I really hope so.
Yet there is beauty in limitation. It is the end of the road where we are so aware of God’s eternity and we are comforted and enveloped by it.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born, and a time to die... He has made everything beautiful in it's time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better than for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil-this is the gift of God.” I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.” -Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 11-14
I love you all so much. I hope you know.
“I, I’m a pilgrim here on this side of the grave.
And I, I’m a pilgrim here, but I’ll walk with you for awhile
Yeah, I’ll love you here for awhile”
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