What Is Life?

Be prepared for that great skyway

Before life slips by in the freeway.

Ever stopped to think about not getting up the next morning after going to bed the night before?We may dream or even have nightmares whilst we sleep, but everything is vaguely remembered upon waking. I have known of people who never wake up at all – peacefully gone to be with our Heavenly Father. To think of it, this unconscious action is never within our control. So it is with our lives – like a breath it could just as easily be blown off and in its place a stiff body is all that remains.

As a further reminder of the words from the Psalms, in Psalm 144:4 it is further said: “Man is like a breath; his days are like fleeting shadow.” Like it or detest it, the Holy Book is constantly reminding us how fragile our life is. Right to the end of the Bible, just a few chapters before its end, James 4:14 has this to say:

“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.”

Admittedly, we are nothing – a breath, a mist that comes and goes just as quickly as it appears. We have a life that counts for nothing. It’s futile for anyone to fail to realise the vanity of it all. King Solomon, richly endowed with wisdom and riches by God, surrounded by countless wives and concubines, even attested to this fact in all his writings as in Ecclesiastes. In our lifetime too, we have seen the tall and mighty fall, the rich and famous dead and gone. No matter how great, nobody lasts forever. Nothing is ever permanent. We are like ships that pass in the night . . . sailing in the vast ocean like going nowhere.

Shouldn’t we stop to think and ponder as we live from day to day, month to month, year to year, for life is nowhere far but near! We should grow and draw near to our Heavenly Father, for ultimately that’s where our destiny lies.

Let’s live each day in fear of the Lord. Live each day as though it’s our last. At day’s end, the shortest distance between us and God is dropping unto our knees and thank God for the blessings of the day, and then asking for His mercy and grace for the next.

“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the summer of my days;

let me know how fleeting is my life.

You have made my days a mere handbreadth;

The span of my years is as nothing before you.

Each man’s life is but a breath.”- Psalm 39: 4-5

Paul Chong