Bound by Time
“As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more” Psalm 103:15-16
I was at a meeting in the board room of a Boston hotel. Along the wall of the boardroom were portraits of people who had at one time been movers and shakers in or around Boston. They were all dead and their portraits on the wall were to commemorate their contributions. All these leaders had moved from life to legacy, and that too was fading as the verse above points out. That’s just the way it is. On this side of heaven, we’re bound by time. We’re born, we live, and we die. That’s just the way it is.
The Bible tells us that, because of sin, man is mortal. (Genesis 6:3). This mortal coil is not made for eternity, the soul, yes, the body, no. In the curse of the Fall of Man, we hear God say to Adam, “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19). Our time on earth can be divided into three parts, as follows:
The Past: This is time already spent; like water poured out on the ground it cannot be recovered. You can reflect on it, you can build on it, you can overcome it, but you can’t change it—it’s past.
The Present: This is the time you’re living in right now. How are you spending it? Be careful, it will soon leave the present and become part of the past. Just yesterday, today was tomorrow, and today, will become yesterday, tomorrow. It’s a sobering thought.
The Future: This is our time yet to come. We can and should plan now for how we’ll spend the future, but, of course, the challenge is that none of us knows how much of it we’ll have.
We should learn from the past, but we should live in the present toward eternity, remembering that our lives will be our legacy.
“Only one life, t’will soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Are you living toward eternity?
Having begun as a guest speaker in 2005, Dan was appointed Interim Pastor in 2008 and has been serving Maple Root Baptist ever since. As a small group leader and Chaplin for the Connecticut Tigers, Dan has a heart for the lost and the God that saves them.