#DailyDevotion So What Are You Doing With The Few Inches Of Life You Have?
Psalm 39 I said: I will watch my ways and not sin with my tongue; I will keep a muzzle on my mouth while I face the wicked man. 2I kept completely silent and said nothing; then my grief was stirred up, 3and my heart burned in me. As I meditated it blazed. Then I spoke with my tongue:
It is perhaps a difficult thing to watch people sin with impunity. They live in iniquity and want you to give approval as if it was good. It can be very difficult to see this and not sin with your tongue. We know if we open our mouths we will be hit with a barrage of “judge nots.” If we say something, it will often come out in anger and we will go beyond what the LORD gives us to say and sin ourselves with our words.
So David, in facing the wicked man decides to keep these things to himself. He sets out to muzzle his mouth and keep silent and say nothing. He does not want to sin with his tongue. Yet the wickedness of others weighs down upon him. As he meditates on the situation and doesn’t say anything it burns within his heart. He can hardly contain himself. He finally speaks but the Holy Spirit takes him in a different direction. Does the Spirit ever change the direction of your thoughts and prayers?
4“O LORD, tell me about my end, how many days I have left, so that I know how fleeting my life is. 5You made my days a few inches, and my whole life is nothing to You. 6Every man stands there as just a vapor; each one walks around in the dark; he makes a lot of fuss about nothing; he heaps up things without knowing who will get them.”
It is no doubt the Holy Spirit who takes David in this direction. He turns things back to David. On the one hand, it could be David who is wondering how much longer he will have to put up with evil in his life. I think the Spirit is driving him to examine himself and his own condition. So David gets the thought he should wonder how many days he has left upon the earth. He should come to realize how fleeting his life is. His life, like our lives, is just like a few inches in time. Our whole life (time wise) is nothing to the Eternal One. We’re all like the morning mist that burns up when the sun comes up and we are no more.
Worse than that, we are like people who walk in the dark, that is often without God’s word directing our lives. We go by what we feel and what we think. We forget to judge it according to God’s revealed will. We end up making a lot of fuss about nothing. We may think this is a relatively new thing in social media but as we can see, we’ve been making mountains out of mole hills for millennia. Are all the things we get upset worth that much time and effort? Could we better spend our time doing good to others and showing people love?
Which leads to the last phrase of verse 6, “he heaps up things without knowing who will get them.” Do we need everything we have? Do we use it for the benefit of others? Do we have stuff because buying it in the first place made us feel better? Even if in worldly terms our possessions have some worth, who is going to get them when we are no longer here? How are they going to use them? If you’re decluttering, instead of asking Marie Kondo’s question, “Does it bring me joy,” perhaps we should ask, “can it serve my neighbor?”
It is a good thing to meditate on our transitoriness of our being here in the LORD Jesus Christ and ask ourselves, what are we doing with the time given us.
Merciful Father, help us to number our days so we may live our lives according to Your will and not waste them in fruitless thinking. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.