Can A Drip Really Count

Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow - Psalm 144:4

Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor – Psalm 39:5

…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 – James 4:14

When my oldest son J.R. was about 6 we were on an airplane and leaving out of Orange County airport. Our departure took us out of the Pacific Ocean and down the coast for a bit. It was a moment when I think we were both struck with just how immense the ocean was. He was enamored by the water until a moment when he turned to me and said, “Daddy, I have to pee.” Of course as a good dad and a typical male, I just burst out laughing and then led him to the restroom closet (remember, it’s an airplane). He went and did his duty, came back and the ocean was gone of course. He then confessed that when we were at the beach he in fact had a similar need while in the water. We were quiet for awhile and then he said, “It wasn’t that much. You couldn’t tell.”

This was not a moment when I should have been trying to swallow the drink my flight attendant had given me. Now it was my turn to go to the bathroom.

But J.R. was right. It wasn’t much. Just like our lives compared to eternity. They aren’t a lot. It is beyond time and includes all of time – eternity simply swallows up life.

If eternity is what we are being prepared for and this life is such a small thing, why then do we invest so much in temporal activity that is here today and then gone, burned up, useless in terms of forever? We know that the way we invest our lives here can have eternal impact. And yet…

It is the great paradox of Christian behavior. Knowing what we know we chose to build houses on sand and not on rock. We build and establish lives of straw and not steel.

I don’t have time today to massage this or sugar coat it. Here’s the deal: does your life have any component at all where you have eternity in mind? Do you have an overall ministry? Do you know what it is? Are you doing it? When you wake up of a morning are you greeting God and expecting to be used even in the smallest of ways?

Do you have an eye on eternity? That little phrase simply means we need to be about what God has called us to do. The motive of which is He leads in things that are eternal. Our being obedient to the mission ensures the value of our lives.

This overall seems like a bummer of a time. Everywhere. Anywhere. But hey…it’s just the world – Don’t let life hassles keep you from having an eternal impact on people you meet; the same ones Jesus loves. Don’t! Focus on the problem and Satan wins. He is master of the urgent, not the important; of the temporal and not the eternal.
Make today a day likes this:

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain -1 Corinthians 15:58

I remain…

InHISgrip,
~J~