Prelude

Thursday, July 19, 2012

“My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass” (Psalm 102:11 KJV).

This earthly life is brief, but it is a prelude of the life to come, so be sure to use your time wisely for God’s glory.

Even from conception, death works in us to end our physical life. As the psalmist wrote in today’s Scripture, “My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.” Because of the motion of the light source and/or the illuminated object, a shadow eventually grows smaller and smaller: it “declineth.” Our earthly life ends like grass “withereth” (fades away). James wrote, “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (4:14bc). A “vapour” is a gas that can either become a solid or liquid: it ultimately “vanisheth away” (disappears).

Indeed, this earthly life will fade, but our souls will continue to exist. Prepare! What we do in this earthly life with God’s Word will impact our eternity. Lost people can place their faith in Paul’s Gospel—Christ’s finished crosswork on Calvary—as sufficient payment for their sins (1 Corinthians 15:1-4), and go to heaven, or they can reject it and go to hell. We Christians can study and believe sound (dispensational) Bible doctrine, so we can be equipped to function in the heavenly places for God’s glory, or we can ignore it and be unfit for God’s use.

Paul wrote, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man [physical body] perish [die], yet the inward man [spiritual body] is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

This earthly life is but a prelude of “the ages to come:” by faith, look at the unseen future, and prepare for eternity!