“Yet
you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For
you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
–James 4:14. :For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn
like a furnace…My days are like an evening shadow: I wither like
grass.” –Psalm 1103:3 “You are the light of the world. A city
set on a hill cannot be hidden.” –John 5:14 (ESV)
Having
just experienced a birthday this past week, I have given much thought
to the question,”For what is your life?”
It
is true, as James writes in 4:14, we “do not know what tomorrow
will bring.” He likens the span of one’s life as a ‘mist that
vanishes.” Wispy, non-permanent. The psalmist likened one’s
life to smoke, again a vaporous element. Think how quickly the
evening shadows pass into nightfall. Life is like that.
Chief
Crowfoot, and American Indian Chief, wrote in 1821:
“What
is life?
It
is the flash of a firefly in the night…
The
breath of a buffalo in the winter time…
A
little shadow which runs across the grass
And
loses itself in the sunset.”
The
metaphorical representation of life by James and the Psalmist, I
think, are geared to make us look soberly at the time allowed us for
earthly life. At best, and even with an accrual of years beyond the
“fourscore” accounting, life passes rapidly. I’ve done much
remembering in this week of my birthday. Although I’ve had a happy
life, and I want to think a useful and worthwhile life, I realize
that it has passed quickly with no part of it standing still or
seeming to pass slowly. Our time moves on; that is a certainty.
What
is life?
It
is our breath from God, the Creator of the Universe.
Our
time on earth is a little while, compared to eternity.
Each
of us came to earth for a purpose and a reason known to God.
He
knew us before we were conceived in the womb.
Happy
the one who can walk with God and find and perform His purpose for
life.
I
am a child of God.
Jesus
called me, as a child of God, the light of the world.
A
light’s purpose is to shine, to penetrate darkness, to illuminate.
I
emanate a light ignited by His divine spark within my life.
I
am not thinking of myself more highly than I ought to think when I
consider that light has a purpose.
Jesus
declared me, a believer, a light that shines in the darkness of this
world.
Although
my time is shorter than it has been, some more time seems still
allotted to me.
I
rejoice to know that to have life is to have light.
‘For
what is life?’ It is light.
In
the evening light casts a long shadow.
May
this be true for those of us who have been granted a long life with
purposefulness still intact.
Jesus
urges, “So live that your light shines.”
-Ethelene
Dyer Jones 05.17.2015
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