Taking a Brief Look at Life’s Brevity

One of the wonders of the English language is how a single word can take on a variety of meanings. Take the word love for example: We can love a spouse, child, friend, job, sports team, a vacation spot, TV show, car, God, and a host of other things – and in each case, mean something different.

 

Another of those “multi-meaning” words is the word brief. An attorney can compile a legal brief that is anything but brief. We might stop by a friend or relative’s home for a brief visit, which could mean a few minutes or a couple hours. If someone needs to tell us something important, they might preface with the words, “I’ll be brief.” When making a choice of men’s underwear, the option is “boxers or…briefs.” 

 

And then there’s “brief” in terms of the perspective we might have on life, whether it’s our own or someone else’s. An advantage – or liability, depending on how you look at it – of advancing into adult years is an appreciation of how brief earthly life really is. When we’re young, as adolescents or teens, senior adulthood seems like an eternity away. Then one day we realize how quickly years have passed.

 

Looking back, we might marvel at how much of our lives we’ve spent on frivolous pursuits – hours, days and years that are gone forever, never to be recaptured. Perhaps this is one reason King David of Israel wrote so eloquently, “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath…” (Psalm 39:4-6).

 

Does this sound pessimistic? Perhaps, but I’m more inclined to regard it as realistic. As we get older, the years which once seemed to pass so slowly begin picking up pace, a year seeming to conclude almost as soon as it started.

 

Reading the early chapters of Genesis, we see that in the first human generations, people’s lives amazingly spanned centuries. Adam, we’re told, lived to be 930. His son, Seth, lived to the ripe old age of 912. Other men with names like Enosh, Kenan, Mahalelel and Jared each lived well beyond 900 years. Methuselah was the oldest of them all, dying when he was 969 years old, according to the Scriptures.

 

Can you imagine having been born in, say, the year 1096 and still being alive today? Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Alas, folks today don’t live nearly that long; we might not want to even if we could. More people do seem to be living past 100 these days, but that’s still a mere fraction of the lifespans of the earliest Genesis generations. Sooner or later, our earthly tenure will come to an end.

 

Which brings us back to David’s solemn petition: “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end…how fleeting is my life…. Each man’s life is but a breath….” If that’s true, in light of the whole scheme of time, space and eternity, how should we respond? 

 

Basically we have two options: We can take a fatalistic approach, echoing the writer of Ecclesiastes, assumed by most to be King Solomon of Israel, who suggested, “Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him – for this is his lot” (Ecclesiastes 5:18). 

 

Or we can strive to identify our strengths and gifts, seeking to maximize them for the benefit of those we love, as well as those we encounter from day to day, and doing what we can to advance the cause of Jesus Christ for as long as God enables us. 

The apostle Paul exhorted first-century believers, “Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise by as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). This continues to be excellent advice for all who follow Christ in the 21^st century. “Tempus fugit,” as the Romans used to say – “Time flies.” It’s brief. We’d be wise to invest it, capitalizing on every opportunity that presents itself.