Death is a sobering reality. We know it is inevitable. With illness, age, traumatic accident or causes unexplained, every person of every nation, race, and religion will die. We’ve heard the old adage, “We’re not promised tomorrow,” and sayings such as, “Life today is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present.” Millennial people have created the acronym, YOLO, to stand for “you only live onc We know we only get one shot here, and that can exist as our ultimate fear or our greatest motivation. The Bible tells us it’s our innate nature as humans to long for something everlasting, simply because God made us that way. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” The Creator of all heaven and earth has placed within us a constant desire only satisfied in Him. In this broken world, we’ve been given a spiritual thirst to long for the perfection only promised in heaven.
2nd Corinthians 5:1 says, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” This reminds us that all homes here on earth, no matter where we live: a village, a high-rise building, a homeless shelter, or a house on a hill – are merely temporary.
Francis Chan, a former pastor, and Christian author in California gives an excellent illustration of eternity. He takes a rope and unravels it from the church door, around the sanctuary and up to the platform where he stands. He tells everyone in the congregation to imagine the rope extending on endlessly, representing a timeline of their existence into eternity. A piece of the rope, measuring the size of a finger, is painted red. This threeinch section of red signifies a person’s lifetime on earth. Compared to the length of eternity, it doesn’t amount to much. Yet so often, many of us of live for those red three inches – the here, now, and the tomorrows that eventually add up to a whole lifetime.
As believers, knowing this life is temporary, we should choose to change how we live it. 2nd Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outward self is decaying, yet our inward self is renewed day by day. For our trouble, light and momentary, is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that far beyond all comparison, as we look not atwhat can be seen but what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
These days and these moments are important. They carry the weight of how we live for years in eternity. If we have accepted Christ as our Savior, our purpose shifts from living for ourselves to living for Him. Yet somewhere in the midst of the routine and the various schedules of life’s often-consuming yet still trivial demands, we lose sight of this eternal perspective. The many days of “today and tomorrow” we fill for ourselves dissolve in the view of eternity. 1st Peter 1:24-25 says, “All people are like grass, and all their beauty is like a flower of the field. The grass dries up, and the flower drops off, but the word of the Lord lastsforever.”
Simply put, what we accomplish for ourselves and by ourselves in our time on earth will not last. Things we do for the Lord will endure forever. There’s an old story where a man was asked to give the definition of Christianity. He answered, “Phillips Brooks.”
Phillips Brooks was a clergyman after the Civil War until his death in 1893. He is remembered and honored for many things in the faith, but most of us know his work as the writer of a littleChristmas hymn known as “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” His life exemplified his hope in Christ, so much so that his life resembled the closest picture of Christianity to a non believer. His life showed one how to spend your three inches representing Christ in such a way that defines Christianity, with grace, truth,and love secure in the hope that is Christ. The three inches Bishop Brooks lived will bring praise to Him forever.
So, if you are thinking about three inches, they can be anything you want them to become. A three-inch stack of new c-notes would be about $70K. A golf pencil is just over three inches. Lots of computer code can fit in three inches. A cremated body is reduced to about three inches of ash to store in a decorative box. So, how will you spend your short three inches?
John T. Catrett, III