Why you do not even know
what will happen tomorrow, what is your life? You are a mist that appears for a
little while and then vanishes.”
-James 4:14
Boris Yeltzin was
weathering the stormy coup in Moscow. As he mounted the barricade outside the
parliament, he allowed his five-year-old granddaughter to climb up and stand by
his side. History was being made and it was a grand moment to share with this
little girl.
Seeing the soldiers and
tanks, the little girl turned to her now powerful grandfather and asked,
“Grandfather, will the soldiers shoot us in the head?” at her question, reality
turned and I felt the fragility of life, Yeltzin said in an interview of CNN.
“What is your life?” asks
one of the first New Testament books to be written. I thought of those words as
I stood beside the bed of a friend’s dad who was described as a very careful
driver. He always wore seatbelts and never exceeded the speed limit. Yet a car
approaching from the opposite direction drifting off the highway and injuring
him.
Moses, who had known both
the classroom of Egypt and the vastness of a classroom under the stars as he
took care of his father-in-law’s sheep, said life is like a tale that is told,
or a story which a shepherd would tell around the camp fire at the end of the
day (Psalm 90:4).
Three thousand years ago,
Moses talked about our years as being “Threescore years and ten” (Psalm 90:10),
or 70 years, still about the length of the average life span today. But of one
thing I am certain – eventually, we will cross the threshold which separates us
from eternity.
The real enemy is not
death: it is an empty life which brings us to the end with no assurance of life
beyond the grave. Think about it.
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