-Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.-
"And he said to them, 'Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.' And he told them a parable, saying, 'The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. ’But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.'" (Luke 12:15-21)
Death! A certainty indeed! How like the rich man in the story are many today. Planning for a future where we can sit back and retire from our labors and do what we want to do. Putting our hope in our 401k's, pensions, etc. There is nothing evil in planning for our future. It is godly and biblical to do so but not to retire from everything and to live to please ourselves. This is never prescribed in the Bible. In fact, if God ever had a retirement plan for Christians it would be this, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21
The difference, we would say, between the rich man and most like him is that God has not said to them, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you.” But hasn't He? “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” James 4:14 So short are our lives that we could be said to be born in the morning and gone by the night. In the vast scheme of the history of the world, what is our life but a blip on the screen. If all of history were a movie most of us wouldn't be the hero or the heroine or even making a cameo appearance, but we would be more like an extra in the background of one scene. If you are putting all your hopes and dreams on a future of sitting back and taking it easy while the world passes by; you could safely take God's warning to heart.
This life is a pilgrimage. We are not here to merely make the best of it or enjoy it while we can. God has placed us here to work! While here He may, by His grace, give us many things to enjoy, but we are not meant to live unto those things. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James 4:3 We are put here to glorify God and to live unto Him. We are to be delighted in Him, not in His gifts.
We are not to hold on tightly to this life and the things of this world, but instead let go of our death grip on this world and cling unto God. In Him is life, our life! We are to spend our time here preparing to spend eternity with the Lord and in the presence of His amazing grace.
“The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Romans 13:12-14
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