JUST A MOMENT

Beginning at the moment of conception, life is a collection of moments until the moment of death. In reality life is short but we live as though we will live forever on this planet we call Earth. Humanity will live an eternity in one of two places, eternity in the Abyss or eternity with God. Someone once asked me where Heaven was. I told Heaven is where God is. They asked where hell is. I told them where God ain’t.

Many moments ago, my maintenance foreman asked, “Do you know why wars were fought with young men?” I told him that I ready never thought about it. He said, “Because old men won’t. Young men are ten feet tall, bullet proof, and will kill the enemy. Old men know mortality, hurt, and death.”

Precious, few, and temporal are the moments we share together in life. We build houses, families, communities, cities, businesses, and government thinking they will last forever.

Think about the cost of the average home and the thirty plus year mortgage. That house will need repair long before the mortgage is paid. Children will grow and leave home before the last house payment is paid in full. The new vehicle parked in the drive will be in the repair shop before the last payment is due. Children, house, vehicle, and neighborhood will become moments of the past. Everything will be out of date and undergo change due to the deterioration of time.

Someone mentioned in Discipleship class at church Sunday night that the world was nothing like the one we all grew up in. That truism is the same for each generation. Moments fleeing away metamorphizing by capturing the old and newfangled freshness filling the air. After a while contemporary replaces the traditional and eventually the contemporary becomes the traditional creating cycles of momentary accomplishment.

God created us with eternity in our hearts. There was a song we sang when I pastored at Brierfield Baptist Church that reminded me of our temporary time on earth. Some of the words were, “This world is not my home I am just passing through.” We are just passing through, but the WORLD tries to convince people that the here and now is it. The here and now will one day be “somewhere beyond the blue” cause we’re a just passing through.

God is without beginning or end. Special and divine moments fill our being. Momma used to teach us that things will get better. Moments would get worse in life, but the moments of pain and sorrow will one day pass. Looking at scars remind that the hurt that was once severe is now gone. It provides minute reminders that most pain will subside with time. Heartaches though austere are transient, death though cruel is transitory, and sickness though devastating is ephemeral.

The good news is:

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. II Corinthians 4:17-18 KJV