Daily devotion – Lord willing…
James 4: 13 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”; 14 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. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”
This week in the AFL football finals, a player was knocked unconscious, and he was completely out for a number of minutes, laying prostrate on the middle of the M.C.G. oval.
This young man has suffered a number of concussions over his football career and now faces a decision as to whether he will risk his health to continue playing AFL.
Our lives are ever so fragile, and, in a moment, we can all of sudden be faced with an illness, an accident, something that blacks out everything else in our lives and we are faced with our frail mortality. On my journey home from running Church errands, I drove past two locations where young men have died suddenly and tragically in motor vehicle accidents with no other vehicles involved. There are chairs at both locations, and one has a small cross set up with flowers placed at its base.
When we stop for a moment, we are all just minutes away from leaving this world should we stop breathing, or our heart suddenly stops.
I live each day as my last, and that each new day that God gives me, He has brokered for me so that I may live its full 24 hours in some way that He desires that will bring Him glory.
Life, when we are confronted with our frail mortality, becomes very simple.
There are moments, times in our lives that God allows things to happen, so that we may get a sneak peak into life after leaving this world for the next. Such moments really are a blessing from God because they allow us to stand back and see where we are heading, what foolish things are cluttering my life and what in my life is an essential.
Today, where is your life? Has God tapped you on your shoulder and given you an opportunity to re-access, to re-evaluate, to re-set?
James reminds us so succinctly that our life in reality compared to eternity is really just a vapour.
Those young men remembered at those two locations knew not that at that hour or moment in their lives, it would be their last. Let us live each day as if it was our last and let us live it with the will of pleasing God. That this be the driving force and direction for every breath and new day that God gives us.
For one day for each of us we will be our last here in this world before we pass onto the next.
Give your life to Christ now and live it for Him now. Let Him have complete charge over you and then no matter, you will live with the peace of God in your heart ready for the next glorious stage in your life – eternity with Him!