Our text for today is James 4:13-15
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”
May God bless the reading of his word.
Life is short. We are not made for here. We are made for there. On this idea, a poet wrote, “Grow old with me. The best is yet to be. The last of life for which the first is made.” Sometimes when I read those words, I think, “That’s baloney.” Then I think again and realize the truth. One writer explained the joureey of the ages in this way:
“When the sun goes below the horizon he is not set; the heavens glow for a full hour after his departure. And when a great and good man sets, the sky of this world is luminous long after he is out of sight. Such a man cannot die out of this world. When he goes he leaves behind him much of himself. Being dead, he still speaks.”
When the sun sets, it does not die. What really matters is what you do with the few years of life that God has granted you. One man recognized this and talked about how people, as they age, might be compared to old ships. He noted that some old wooden ships rot and others end their ship days with very fine wood that is used for other things.
Some of those old ships were still beautiful because of the wood from which they were made. Others grew more beautiful over the years because they absorbed the seepage of the loads they carried over the decades.
So there is also a vast difference between the quality of old people who have lived self-indulgent, useless lives, and the fiber of those who have sailed over seas and carried cargoes as the servants of God and the helpers of their fellow men.
Lonnie Davis