I visited this afternoon with an elderly woman who was diagnosed 20 years ago with cancer. She has survived a number of surgeries with amazing resiliency and even though she is battling congestive heart failure, is still "alive and kicking"!
She told me the story of a young relative who was tragically killed in a work-related injury this week--not even forty years old. He was in good health and he and his wife were expecting their first child.
Of this seeming paradox, James writes,
"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go do to this or that city'...why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that...'" 4:13-16
It is a matter of quiet confidence to know that our days are numbered. "the length of our days is seventy years--or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away". These words from the 90th Psalm really say we are uncertain about the length of our lives--but we know they will "quickly pass".
What is our response to this? Psalm 90:12 admonishes us "teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom". The MESSAGE paraphrases it this way, " Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well!"
In a recent sermon I heard from John MacArthur he observed, "I don't what to live one day longer than God intends...or die one day sooner!"
Whatever we think about life and the extent of our days, we need to live wisely and well, because we do not know what tomorrow may bring...or if tomorrow will come. Whether 80 or 40, we must be ready for the moment God calls us, with the confidence we are ready to meet Him because we have exercised faith in what Christ has done for us. "For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23.
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