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I want you to think for a moment: your life, your time here on this earth, is limited. I think that we should be making the most of our lives, fulfilling the purpose for which we were created.
To make the most out of life, we need to be focused on what matters: our relationship with God, our relationships with our family and our friends, and fulfilling the unique purpose for which God created us and placed us here on this earth.
So what’s holding us back from living this way? What are we waiting for? Why are we waiting?
Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days or right that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” It makes me think about and contemplate the dash, that little line that separates the two important dates that define our lives: our beginning and our end. Every one of us has one of those days on the left. And yes, we all have one of those other days too–that right-hand date. We don’t really like to think about that.
But it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen to all of us. We have no control over that first date. I didn’t decide that on Saturday, February 11, at 1:20 in the afternoon, I would come into the world. I just showed up! And for the most part, we have no real control over that other date either: the day that our life on this earth is over.
The only thing that you and I have control over is that little line, that dash that separates the years of our birth and our death. My question to you is this: how are you spending that dash? What are you doing with your dash?
It’s good for you to deal with this question because life goes by so quickly. I think you’ve probably figured that out by now. The Psalmist writes about the brevity of life several times:
Psalm 10:23, “My days vanish, like smoke.”
Psalm 144:4, “Man is like a breath. His days are like a fleeting shadow.”
And Psalm 39:5, “You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand, my entire lifetime is just a moment to you at best.”
Each of us is just a breath, and our time always seems to move faster and faster. So how are you living your dash? Are you living the dash knowing fully who you are and why you’re here? Or are you living a hurried life spending precious time caring about things that, in the end, don’t really matter?
Unfortunately, that’s the path many people are on today. But God did not breathe life into your body and knit you together in your mother’s womb so that you could fast-forward through life, living only for yourself. God made you for a purpose. Psalm 139 says, “You made all the delicate inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex. Your workmanship is marvelous, how well I know it. You watched me as I was, as I was being formed in utter seclusion. As I was woven together in the dark womb, You saw me before I was born in every day of my life was recorded in your book, every moment was laid out before a single day have passed.”
The Bible says that you and I were custom-designed by the Almighty God. Regardless of the circumstances of your birth, you are not an accident. God planned you before you were even born. You were put on this earth for a purpose and to make a contribution to this world. There are things God wants you to do, purposes that He wants you to fulfill, and a life He wants you to live.
Ephesians 2:10 says we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do the good things that He planned for us long ago. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, it says, “Don’t you realize that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You don’t belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So honor God with your body.”
For those of us who are in Christ, our dash is no longer our own. The big question is, what are you doing with your dash? What are you doing with the life that God has given you, and that Christ paid for with His life? Are you living it for Him? Or are you living it, in fast-forward, for yourself? What you do with your life matters, because it is a gift from God. Live it for him.
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