Who Determines the Length of a Life?
Recently our pastor spent two weeks teaching on the believer's preparation for aging, then on the sudden passing of a 13-moth-old boy from our church.
How pertinent certain passages (NASB) have become.
Life is brief, as Moses observed: "For we have been consumed by Your anger and by Your wrath we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence. For all our years have declined in Your fury; we have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for it is soon gone and we fly away.... So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:7-11, 12).
Or, as James admonished the presumptuous: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that'" (James 4:13-15).
Or, as Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth: "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
What must our goals be? According to Moses, a heart of wisdom; according to James, a submission to the sovereignty of God; according to Paul, a choice to look at the invisible, eternal, rather than the visible, temporal.
Length of years?
"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29). According to my understanding, the secret things include how long any one of us lives.
"Your eyes have seen my unformed substance, and in Your book were written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them" (Psalm 139:16). Even the psalmist recognized that God had determined from eternity past how long he would live.
How pertinent certain passages (NASB) have become.
Life is brief, as Moses observed: "For we have been consumed by Your anger and by Your wrath we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence. For all our years have declined in Your fury; we have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for it is soon gone and we fly away.... So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:7-11, 12).
Or, as James admonished the presumptuous: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that'" (James 4:13-15).
Or, as Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth: "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
What must our goals be? According to Moses, a heart of wisdom; according to James, a submission to the sovereignty of God; according to Paul, a choice to look at the invisible, eternal, rather than the visible, temporal.
Length of years?
"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29). According to my understanding, the secret things include how long any one of us lives.
"Your eyes have seen my unformed substance, and in Your book were written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them" (Psalm 139:16). Even the psalmist recognized that God had determined from eternity past how long he would live.
posted by Ebeth | 8:26 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home