Living our fleeting lives

Posted at Reformation Scotland:

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we persist in assuming that our lives here on earth will continue indefinitely, and that we are free to plan whatever we like. Everyone knows that life is short and uncertain, but we tend to treat it as a truism and we don’t let it impact us personally. James wrote in his epistle about the folly of this approach — it comes from misplaced pride and it must end in dreadful disappointment. It’s not me who’s in control, but God. Instead of rebelling against this, it would bring us contentment and safety to believingly and thankfully embrace it. In the following extract from his commentary on James, Thomas Manton shows that the wise response is to recognise God’s right to direct all things in His providence, and to use the short time we have to prepare for endless eternity.

Many passages in Scripture show how brief our life is. It is compared to “the flowers of the field” (Isaiah 40:6–7), the “wind” (Job 7:7), a leaf before the wind (Job 13:25), and a “shadow” (Job 14:2).

There is a heap of similes in Job 9:25–26 — “Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good. They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.”

The Word uses all these similes so that every fleeting and decaying object would remind us of our own mortality, as well as to check those proud human desires for an eternal abode here, and lasting happiness in this life. In that passage in Job human frailty is displayed in all the elements: on land, a runner; on water, a swift boat; in the air, an eagle.

The figure of speech used here by James is that of a vapour. “What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” This is simply to show how quickly life passes, and because human life is just a little warm breath coming in and out by the nostrils — a narrow passage, and soon stopped up (Isaiah 2:22).

Continue here.