Every once in a while something happens to remind me just how fragile this physical life of ours is. Three days ago, I made the five-hour drive home after a week away. The winds were strong and the further west I drove the worse they got. I had to fight to keep the car between the lines.
About fifty miles from home I spotted a plume of smoke in the air and soon drove past a roadside wildfire. Another hundred yards down the road I hit a wall of thick smoke that completely obliterated my vision. I could not see past the windshield. I was driving blind at seventy miles per hour.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew there was a car not far ahead of me. But there were more vehicles behind me, so I knew I shouldn’t stop. I slowed some, made my best guess as to where the road was, and continued to drive. And of course the whole time I was praying. It was like driving and wearing a blindfold. After some of the longest few seconds of my life, the smoke cleared and the road appeared. God had brought me through unscathed.
When I got home I learned that others on the interstate that afternoon had met similar circumstances with a much different outcome. Wildfires raged all over West Texas that day because of the high winds and dry conditions. An hour after I hit the smoke wall in Big Spring, there was a seven car pile-up fifty miles down I-20 in Midland. Dense smoke from a wildfire in the median had been the cause. A five-year-old girl died and many others were injured.
We must allow these moments, these times that remind us how fragile our life is, to turn us to God. Our life on this earth is brief and temporary. But the eternal God offers us eternal life with Him. King David recognized this truth.
Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life… the span of my life is nothing before You… each man’s life is but a breath… man bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. Psalm 39:4-7
This life is fragile, but a breath. The things we acquire for ourselves here will be left for someone else. All our bustling about to get and gain is for nothing. But there is hope in God. He offers us new birth into a living hope that can never perish, spoil, or fade. And it’s waiting for us in heaven. (See 1 Peter 1:3-6.)
Are you secure in that hope today? You can be. Learn how to have a saving relationship with Jesus now.
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