James 4:14 (NIV) “You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
To say that life is short is an understatement. It flies by at breakneck speed.
When I was a kid playing with my siblings and cousins on the farm in the hot dry Saskatchewan summers it seemed like life would go on forever. I couldn’t imagine life outside my carefree childhood.
I’m in my sixties now and while in some ways those summers seem like ancient memories, I also wonder how life zipped by so fast.
I’m thinking about all this because my wife and I just moved into a home after more than three years of living in an RV, where we had to become minimalists. We had all our belongings in storage. Now we have the dubious pleasure of unpacking all our precious possessions. In some ways, every day is like Christmas as we open boxes and are joyfully reunited with a trinket that brings back good memories of bygone days. There are other things we come across, however, and wonder, “Why in the world are we hanging on to this?” We need another round of purging.
Life is short. One of the things I regularly ask myself is, “Is there baggage I’m holding onto that I need to let go of? Is there resentment, regret, anger, unforgiveness, fear, or shame that I need to resolve? If I am lacking peace in my heart, what can I trace it back to?”
And then I do the hard work of purging: forgiving, facing fears, letting go of shame, and reconciling broken relationships. Each time I do that my heart recovers a little more peace.
