Urgency: Time Is Short!Psalm 144:4 “If you found out you only had six months to live, how would you spend your remaining time on earth?” In the life planning books, this is a common question. The idea is that when you figure out what you would do in the last six months of your life, you have identified what's really important to you. And you should probably be doing those things now because . . . Life is short. Today, I've been memorizing and meditating on Psalm 144:4. God tells me that life is short. Short like a breath or like a passing shadow. A cloud passes overhead and moves a shadow across the ground. We're talking really short when compared to the span of my life. I started to wonder about the literal interpretation of my life being like a vapor or shadow. Here's what I came up with. I'll share my math with you. You can check it. The average life expectancy for the population of the world is 67.2 years, I checked. The average life expectancy in the United States is 78.2 years. Japan tops the list at 82.6 years. Let's use 67 years for the purposes of this calculation. Now, I have to figure out how long time has been in existence. If we compare my life to eternity, then of course it's less than a vapor or shadow. But if we just consider my life compared to the existence of time, maybe it's different. So how long has time existed? I hear all kinds of numbers suggested by scientists. A million years. Hundreds of millions of years. Hundreds of thousands of years. I think they're all wrong. When I studied Genesis, I calculated the time from the creation of Adam until the Great Flood was 1656 years. By my calculation, another 1000 years brings us to the Israelites leaving Egypt and entering the Promised Land. And since it's the year 2010 right now, we can be reasonably certain it's been about 2010 years since Jesus Christ walked the face of the earth. That just leaves the time between the Israelites entering the Promised Land and the death of Jesus Christ. The best Bible scholars I can find calculate it was about 1300 years. That time frame seems reasonable to me based on what I know about history. It's generally accepted that the time between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament is 400 years. Then if we look at the other events taking place during the time of the prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, we see that 900 years is a reasonable time frame. So I am going with 1300 years. Add them all up and what do we get? 1656 + 1000 + 2010 + 1300 = 5966 or about 6000 years. The time of life is short! Take the average world life expectancy of 67 years and divide by the approximate existence of time, 6000 years. The result 1.1 percent. My life is equal to 1.1 percent of a conservative estimate of the existence of time. Now let's put that into perspective. Consider 1.1 percent of the average life expectancy of 67 years. Result: 7/10s of a year or 8 months. Eight months is 1.1 percent of a 67 year life. My 67 year life span is equivalent to 8 months of the existence of time. Not the existence of eternity, just the existence of time. And if like me, you are past 33.5 years old, then your life is half over. That means in effect, “I have four months to live.” Life is short. This calculation adds a whole new twist to the question: “If you found out you only had six months to live, how would you spend your remaining time on earth?” Like me, you've been warned. We have the equivalent of less than 8 months to live. If by the grace of God, you make it to 100, you will have lived the equivalent of 11 months, three months more. Still less than a year. Life is short. Now what? 1. Tell God you understand that life is short. Think on these things: 1 Chronicles 29:15; Psalm 39:11; Psalm 144:4; and James 4:14. 2. Ask God what He wants you to do. God has a will for your life, a plan. If you ask, He will tell you what it is. Ask. Write it down. Create a plan. God reserves the right to change the plan as you travel through life. But for now, we need to give as much of ourselves as we can to as much of God's will and plan for our lives as we know. 3. Take action! That's what I've been doing for the last several months. I've had to give up some things in my life so I've can have more time and energy to focus on the new things God has asked of me, like this website. I've parted ways with some difficult friends who were sucking the life out of me. I've disassociated my self from a couple of groups so I could invest in a couple of new groups. I'm working to develop some new skills. Writing, speaking, storytelling. What about you? How will you spend your “last 4-6 months” on earth? After all, time is short!
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Posted on April 14, 2010
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