October 2010: Accepting the Inevitable

They come and they go as the clouds pass over on a windy day. The days of our short lives are ticking away as the grandfather clock in my living room – a constant reminder that our days on this earth are truly as a vapor, rising and disappearing.

Only yesterday I was young, twenty-something. Someone warned me that I had no clue of how quickly my youth would be a thing of the past. I considered it to be mostly the voice of disappointment from someone who had many regrets. I would choose wisely how to spend my days without a lot of regret. After all, God had blessed me to know Him in my heart at a young age, and had drawn me to the Scriptures for how to live my time on earth. I would relish the days given me and squeeze every drop of nectar from each one. But even then the nectar was sometimes tainted by the bitter taste of words from my own mouth and other pesky sin problems, as when the little foxes ruin the vineyard.

A positive perspective became more difficult to maintain as various troubles came. Try as I might to avoid all the bumps and pits in the road, my feet grew weary and sometimes bogged with gooey clay. God would graciously lift my feet from the bog and set me on a straight path once again. But alas, clay feet seem to naturally meander into the sticky places, and we inevitably have to make the time to have them scraped and cleaned. (Lord Jesus, not my feet only but all of my being). Those wiser choices in life are not always as easy to recognize as we sometimes assume.

One day when I awoke I was not young anymore. My previous life seemed to have passed like a night’s dream. The mirror showed me that the sparkle of youth had gone and that those telling fine lines had come in spite of all the SPF I had slathered on. More sobering, I had become one of those ‘older’ people who are always so full of advice.

With the realization that life is indeed fleeting, slowly there came a settled acceptance that my stay here is very temporary. My presence here is altogether transient and my contemplation of the end of it is not nearly as dreadful as it once was. The ‘laying aside of my earthly dwelling’ might be imminent or a relatively few years down the road, but my comfort lies in knowing that the true Christian has a hope that shines ever brighter – to leave the stress of a sin-cursed world, to be in Christ’s presence and freed from this body which is so prone to sin, sickness and weariness. The best we can hope for is not to die in our sleep, but to die in Him. “For me to live is Christ…to die is gain…to be with Christ… which is far better.” THIS IS HOPE.  ~ (Psa. 90, James 1:9-12, Phil. 1:20-23, II Cor. 5:1-8)    DLA