THE BREVITY OF LIFE

This was emphasized recently in being reminded that Princess Diana died just ten years ago. But that seems like only yesterday. Ten years is not a long time. Ten years from now I will be 95, if I live. Though by that time I will probably no longer be alive, or if alive I might be delusional, afflicted by Alzheimer or other debilitating disease. Yet, judged by the swiftness with which the last ten years has passed, the next ten years will pass equally fast.

We tend however not to think of death in any near time frame, there being an illusion that life on this earth goes on forever. This another spin-off probably from the evolutionary concept that most things happen gradually through slow evolutionary change.

That's not true. Just about everything meaningful happens suddenly, often unexpectedly. Most things that change things for us drastically come about suddenly, not being anticipated. Test this premise; these examples: Meeting the person you marry? Job moves from one location to another? Threats to health by way of disease or accident that affect you or your loved ones seriously. On ad infinitum.

Yet, contrariwise, we recognize the temporary nature of this abode in the language Paul spoke, and in the songs we sing, such as in "The Life of a Flower." Many of the songs like this one speak the different language Christians spoke a century or more ago, many of them being written then. Unlike Christians of the first century, constantly aware of their status as resident aliens, anticipating Christ's second coming, we seem not much anymore to think in these terms. Instead, to think of this world as a place of permanent abode.

Emphasizing the brevity of life and again on a personal note, I remember my wife, sitting in the chair next to me, six years ago. One minute she was talking and breathing normally. The next moment she had slumped in the chair and her last words, "Call an ambulance.:" Then she stopped breathing, air exhausting from her mouth and nostrils. In seconds she was dead.

Life is uncertain and the events that affect us entirely dependent upon God's providence, his mercy and his disposition. Not, as the unbeliever would have it, upon fate and the inexorable laws of nature. For it is upon the possible infinite combination of natural laws, and through them, that just about anything can happen. As shown to us in the things that were written a fore-time for our learning, how God was able to manipulate history, primarily through his natural laws, to benefit, especially, those who fear Him.

We depend upon God's mercy. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him." (2 Chron 16:9). His primary benefit to man, mostly made possible through manipulating his natural laws, first foretold in Genesis, running like a theme through the Scriptures, was in bringing his Son into the world to die on the cross, through whom we have the forgiveness of sins.
-Glenn Ellis