The Frailty of Life

The Frailty of Life
Psalm 144:4

Man is like a mere breath
His days are like a passing shadow

It is good to for us to see the big picture – we live in frail, temporary bodies. Paul says “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction (suffering) is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4: 16-18). If we fail to see and understand the temporary nature of life we not only lose our spiritual sharpness but our focus on what is important. Look around. A friend suddenly dies from cancer. A friend of my teenage son is killed in a car crash – burned to death. A colleague discovers cancer in her body and is under extreme medication. Our young church leader and golfing partner succumbs to cancer. 100,000 people are incinerated in a few minutes by an atomic bomb. Millions are dying from HIV and Aids. The boy we took into our house on many occasions is killed in a car being driven by his fiancé. Our baby daughter at 22 months dies in our arms. I am now 53 and yet I was 27 only a few years back! Some of these events are too big to understand – all we can know from suffering and death is that our life is a tender piece of grass that can be blown away in an instant! So what do we do? Argue with God and blame him for the apparent mess? How can we blame someone who can deliver us from suffering, pain and our final enemy – death? In our frailty and death we look and hear the one who says now “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies” (John 11:25). This is our perspective, our world view that transcends all suffering and death and the seeming pointlessness of many seemingly tragic events in life that are well beyond our finite minds. “In Him we have redemption” (Ephesians 1: 3-7). Read these verses to gaze upon the treasures we have by receiving Jesus into our life. What else is there in this life that gives such an assurance and is connected to a profound historical event in the cross of Jesus and His resurrection witnessed by hundreds? He is alive and beckons us to His side!