James 4:14

James 4:14 says (in response to the man who says 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there,..."), "Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes"

This description of life ("...a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes") was brought to mind once again today as I visited the residents at Signature Health Care. If you were to walk into the rooms (especially) of the older women who are living there you would see various old black and white photographs that are scattered on their dressers. You would take time and see that some are portraits and that some of are a young man who is dressed in military attire (whom you come to learn is her husband) and then a photograph of the married couple together. Youthfulness runs over all of the photographs. Youthful strength and vigor exudes from the photographs. A time that seemed simpler and ideal over comes you as you try to imagine how life must have been in those days.

Your eyes move from the dresser and the various framed pictures to the human being that is lying on a bed just across the room. This one who was so jovial and lively in the photographs now lies in bed, unable to speak and racked with pain. You look closer and see the remains of lunch still around her mouth and the clear tube that is putting fresh oxygen through her nose. Your heart breaks.

How this is such a reoccurring feeling and sight in the various nursing homes that the Lord has had me in. Such sights and realities cause you to hate sin more, for it was because of the entrance of sin that such things are a present reality. It is because of such sights that you want to live more for Christ while you have health. How every Christian should go to the nursing home at least one time; it would be interesting to see how God would use that time to affect you for the rest of your life. It is times when the Lord allows these thoughts to cross your mind that you realize your time spent laboring among these people is not in vain. The great joy it is to serve the saints who are there, and to bring the gospel to those whom have never heard.

As heart breaking as this is, as much as it could cause despair; for the child of God through faith in Jesus Christ, there is promise of a redeemed body. The hope lies in Christ, the One who conquered death and sin; the One who raised from the dead and appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time (1 Corinthians 15:6). It is because of His resurrection that the Christian's faith is not in vain, and that as Christians we are not to be pitied most among men.

Let us, by God's grace, live for Him with all of our might! Whether you are in school preparing to become a doctor, studying to be a missionary, mowing grass, driving the bus for a day-care or a 5th grade school teacher; let us lose our lives in this world that we may find them.