Days of Our Lives

Everyone wants to be remembered. No one wants to think of their live as  a story that is merely written in the dust of time simply to be forgotten. However, Jeremiah 17: 13 says that those who do not trust in their Lord are ultimately writing a story that will soon be forgotten: one that is written in the dust and sands of times.

LORD, you are the hope of Israel; all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust.

In order to have a memorable a story, a story that leaves an inheritance for others, one simply can not afford to live for one's self. One must live beyond the pages of the banality and mundaneness of life. To escape the meager offerings of everyday existence, one must collaborate with a Being with a higher purpose and greater initiative. We must leave off the writing to God. We must surrender the pen to His hand, to His plan, to His foresight; in other words, we leave our story to His divine script and rest in the promise that what He does with the pages of our lives will have  meaningful value in the present and eternal value after we die.

Who best to write our story than the author of our lives? God writes every day of our lives, from the moment of conception to our dying breath: "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be" (Psalm 139:16).   Psalm 56:8 testifies that "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book."

No one wants to think that their existence has no value- that they are simply dis-remembered once they are placed into the ground, once dust has returned to dust. One wants to believe that one's days have had significance and worth and value, but how can one be sure that is the case, how can one leave a lasting legacy? Simply, by resting and trusting in the truth that God's plan and hope for a future which He promises in Jeremiah 29:11 is a reality.  It  is not a bogus promise on which He has no intention of keeping.

My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter; I speak the things which I have made touching the king: My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. (Psalm 45:1). The psalmist is able to proclaim that God's praises are the only things he needs to inscribe, for he truly believes that goodness and mercy shall follow him all the days of his life as He dwells in His King's presence (Psalm45:1).

The psalmist is not in denial: Indeed, You have made my days as hand breadths, And my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah.(Psalm 39:50. Selah means pause and think on these things. He is inviting the reader to recognize the brevity of life and its indeterminate length. All that remains of consequence is what we have done for others and our God.

A striking story of Jesus finds him stooping low one day to write in the dust (John 8:6). Some people think that He was cataloguing a list of the offender's sins- those hypocrites who dared stoned a woman for committing adultery, but who conveniently left the man alone. But what if Jesus was writing done all the hopes and dreams that the Creator had for these men, for that solitary woman; what if He were chronicling the story of their lives in the dust?

Adam in the Hebrew means earth. From the earth we have come and to earth our bodies return for  awhile, but our souls, the eternal parts of us live on. Our lives can tell a precious story if we surrender the pen to our Creator.

Still Being Written,

MJ