Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | 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. James 4:14

When Boris Yeltsin was weathering the stormy coup in Moscow which so altered the former USSR, his adrenaline was really flowing.  As he mounted the barricade outside the walls of Parliament and raised his fist in the air, he allowed his five-year-old granddaughter to climb up and stand by his side.  After all, history was being made and what a grand moment to share with this little girl, who would never forget what she had experienced.

Seeing the soldiers and tanks, the little girl turned to her then powerful grandfather who held the tide of history at bay, and asked, “Grandfather, will the soldiers shoot us in the head?”

At that question, said Yeltzin in a later interview with CNN, reality returned and he felt the fragility of life.  Whether you are on the barricades, in the hospital, or preparing to face another quite routine day, life at its best is fragile and short.  “What is your life?” asks one of the first New Testament books to be written, “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes,” says James, the half-brother of Jesus (James 4:14).

I thought of those words as I stood beside the bedside of a friend’s dad who was described as a very careful driver.  He always wore seatbelts and never exceeded the speed limit, something which very few people can honestly boast of.  Yet a car approaching from the opposite direction drifted off the highway and the driver over-corrected, hitting the other car head on.

As I stood there in the intensive care unit of a hospital watching the machines labor to keep him breathing and to keep oxygen flowing to his body, I couldn’t help thinking, “What a strong, powerful man a few days ago, and now his weary body is fighting for breath and life.”

“What is life?” men and women have been asking from the beginning of time.  Moses, who had known both the classroom of Egypt and the vastness of a classroom under the stars as he took care of his father-in-law’s sheep, said that life is like a tale that is told, or a story which a shepherd would tell around the campfire at the end of the day (Psalm 90:4).

The fact is that every individual is terminal–something which shouldn’t bring remorse or depression.  It’s the way life is, but that doesn’t mean that life is terminal.  It goes on whether the body remains healthy or stops functioning entirely.  But, of a certainty, it changes.  Jesus said it as He stood before the tomb of a friend whose life had been cut short by sickness.  “I am the resurrection and the life,” said Jesus Christ. “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).  Then Jesus asked a very important question of those who stood there–a question which you as well, need to face.  “Do you believe this?” He asked Martha.

The word believe means far more than an intellectual assent to the theory that there is life after death.  It means a commitment to something, whereby you take something by faith and commit your heart to it.  It’s just that simple and that complex as well.

Three thousand years ago, Moses talked about our years as being “three score years and ten,” or 70 years, still about the length of the average life span today–70 years, give or take a few.  But of one thing I am certain: eventually, we cross the threshold which separates us from eternity.

Life at its longest is short.  The real enemy is not death.  It is an empty life which brings us to the end with no assurance of life beyond the grave.  Think about it.

Resource reading: Jonah 1:1-17