A reflection on the brevity of life, valuing the present, and remembering what truly matters.
Sometimes I think life is wasted on the dying. What I mean is that we often do not understand how valuable life is until we begin to feel how little of it there really is. When we are younger, time seems generous. There will always be another year, another visit, another phone call, another chance to make something right. We assume the people we love will still be there when we finally slow down enough to notice them. We tell ourselves we will apologize later, forgive later, visit later, call later, pray later. Then life moves, people age, circumstances change, and sometimes later never comes.
Moses prayed,
“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”
I used to hear that verse as a reminder that death is coming. Now I hear it more as a prayer about how to live before death gets here. Numbering our days is not about becoming afraid of life. It is about remembering that time is not unlimited, and if it is not unlimited, then I need to be more careful about what gets my attention.
There are people I thought would always be here who are not here anymore. There are places that once felt permanent that have changed completely. There are years of my life that felt long while I was living them and now seem almost impossibly short when I look back. James wrote,
“For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away”
I understand that better now. Life does not feel like a vapour when we are twenty. It starts feeling more like one when we realize how quickly ten or twenty years can disappear.
That makes me think about how much time I have given to things that did not deserve so much of me. Arguments that seemed important in the moment. Pride that kept me from having conversations I should have had. Anger that outlived the offense that caused it. Too much concern over what people thought. Too much energy spent trying to explain myself to people who were never really interested in understanding me. Looking back, some of those things seem small now, and that is what bothers me. I gave large parts of myself to things that turned out to be very small.
Jesus asked,
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
That question reaches farther than money. A person can gain a lot and still miss what matters. Work matters. Providing matters. Building something worthwhile matters. There is nothing wrong with ambition when it is kept in its place. But accomplishment can become a poor substitute for a life well lived. A man can succeed in public and still neglect the people closest to him. He can spend years proving himself and discover that the proof did not satisfy him. He can become respected by people who barely know him while the people who know him best hardly see him.
Paul wrote,
“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil”
For a long time, I heard “redeeming the time” and thought mostly about productivity. Get more done. Waste fewer hours. Stay busy. I am not sure that is the whole meaning anymore. Some of the best use of time leaves nothing measurable behind. Sitting with someone who is hurting, staying at the table longer than planned, making a phone call because somebody crossed your mind, listening when there is nothing to fix, or finally saying, “I was wrong,” may not look productive at all. But those moments may matter more than a dozen things that looked important on a calendar.
Jesus was interrupted constantly. People stopped Him on the road, called out from crowds, brought children to Him, brought sick people to Him, and asked Him for things when He was already moving somewhere else. He never seemed confused about the value of the person in front of Him. I need to remember that because I can become so focused on using time well that I forget people are part of how time is supposed to be used.
The older I get, the more I think about what deserves the years I have left. Some things do not. Some grudges are too expensive. Some arguments are not worth carrying into tomorrow. Some people need to hear that they matter before they are gone. There are relationships that need more attention than they have been getting, and there are apologies that should not be postponed just because making them is uncomfortable.
Death has a way of making those things obvious. When someone is close to dying, the room changes. Titles stop mattering. Status stops mattering. Nobody cares very much about who got more credit, who had the better house, or who won an argument twenty years ago. People talk about family. They talk about faith. They remember kindness. They remember wounds. They think about what they wish they had said and what they wish they had done differently. That should teach us something while we are still healthy enough to learn it without being forced.
Jesus told the story of a man who believed he had plenty of time. He had accumulated enough that he decided to relax and enjoy the years ahead. Then God said,
“Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”
The man had plans for years he did not have. That story unsettles me because I make assumptions about tomorrow too. I assume there will be another Christmas, another birthday, another visit, another chance to say what I should have said already. Maybe there will be. Maybe there will not.
I do not think Scripture gives us these reminders so we will live frightened of death. I think it gives them so we will stop wasting life. And for the Christian, death is not the end anyway. Jesus said,
“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”
That is where my hope is. Death is not the final word. Christ is. But this life is still temporary, and I only get this version of it once.
I will not get another season with people exactly as they are now. Children grow. Parents age. Friends move. Bodies change. Opportunities pass. The things we assume will always be there often are not. I do not want to wait until I lose something to understand that I should have valued it more. I do not want the end of life to be the first time I become honest about what mattered.
That is what I mean when I say life is wasted on the dying. Too often, the people who finally understand the value of life are the ones who have very little of it left. I want to learn sooner than that. I want to live now with some of the clarity people often find at the end.