With yesterday's plane crash in New York City, we were all once again graphically reminded that life is fleeting. No matter how long we think we may have on this earth, we are never guaranteed a tomorrow. As the psalmist says, "Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow" (Psalm 144:4, NIV). One moment, Cory Lidle, a 34-year old pitcher for the New York Yankees, was on top of the world, playing the game he loves in the playoffs for one of the best baseball teams in the league, and the next moment he is dead and all that is gone."All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field....The grass withers and the flowers fall, but [it is] the word of our God [that] stands forever" (Isaiah 40:6b, 8, NIV).
Let us not be so preoccupied with the here and now of our lives that we neglect the things that are really and eternally important, namely, being right with God through faith in Jesus Christ and growing in that faith by growing in our knowledge and understanding of His Word, which alone stands forever.
2 comments:
Ps 90:1 - "Teach us, O Lord, to number our days that we might acquire a heart of wisdom"
And it's fascinating that despite all that Ecclesiates has to say about the pointless ness of life, he doesn't really mention the brevity of life.
Yes, Solomon's purpose in Ecclesiastes is finding meaning in life, and he doesn't really concern himself with the brevity of life. I wonder, in that time before modern medicine, how apparent the brevity of life would have been to folks like Solomon. In the 17th century (which one would think would have been advanced far beyond the time of Solomon), the infant death rate was extremely high; sickness and disease was commonplace; and people died right under your nose rather than in a "sterile" hospital with nurses and doctors at your beck and call. I wonder, with all our advances in technology and medicine, if we haven't also made ourselves feel more invincible.
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