Show me, Lord, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath,
even those who seem secure.

––Psalm 39:4-5

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…

––As You Like It, William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

It’s estimated that since the Garden and the creation of Adam, roughly 120 billion people have been born. It’s an impossible number to wrap my head around. But similar to the quiet comfort I get when I stare up into the stars on a moonless night, thinking about all those lives—from birth, through the joys and traumas of life, to death—brings me peace. It’s hard to say why, exactly, but I think it’s because this thing called human life has been done so many times before me. It’s like, “If they can all do it, so can I.”

“Life is hard, then you die,” is not an expression lost on me. Of those 120 billion people before you and me—more than 8 billion of whom are riding this blue marble right now, or about 7% of all the people who ever lived—every single one of us has had to deal with at least one trauma. Everyone suffers loss; everyone suffers pain. This is what poets and philosophers like to call the human condition. Capturing it so perfectly is the main reason Shakespeare is still a household name.

Our choice as God’s men is simple, but definitely not easy. There are only two kingdoms—God’s and the enemy’s—and only one reality. That reality is fully revealed in God’s kingdom. That is because He is all truth, and the kingdom of darkness holds no truth in it. The truest truth—the purest definition of reality—is that we were separated from God due to our sin, and He sent His Son to die for those sins and forever bridge the gap between the two kingdoms. We are His now. So in the trauma and loss we continue to experience—the rain and pain falls on the righteous and the wicked—we choose His reality. And then we share it, because there are 8 billion reasons to do so.

Father, help me to live out my days passionately committed to You and Your plan for my life.

 

 

Every Man Ministries