A Life Cut Short

I started thinking about how much more there is that I want to do in my life and told God that I hope that my life doesn’t get cut short. Then it’s like He opened my eyes and was asking me “Would it really be cut short?”. In our society, we seem to think that unless someone dies when they are eighty, that their life was stolen from them and that they missed out. We see them as being so young and having so much left to do. As I really began to consider it, I started thinking about what my family has always said (that matches up with what the Bible says more than the cut short idea): “When it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go.”. The idea is that God has a plan for your life.
Psalm 139 captures God’s perspective on our lives as penned by King David. In verse sixteen David writes to God saying “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.”. This is such an encouraging passage for me. God knows exactly how long each of us will live. He will never be surprised over the fact that a person dies because He planned it. Verse thirteen tells us how God was the One who made us: “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.”.
Even more than that, verses one through four tell us that God knows everything about us now: “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.”. Another verse that I really love is Acts 17:26: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,”. So God created each of us, knew, before we were conceived, how long we would live, He knows about every movement we make, and He even, as we see here, knew history and the exact place we would live. The Bible Knowledge Commentary states that “This sovereign God has omnipotently decreed the history (the times) and boundaries (the exact places) for the nations”.
Jeremiah 29:11 is a popular verse that we tend to put on everything from t-shirts to rings to Bible covers. In my opinion, the reason it is so popular is that people are looking for answers, for hope, for a reason for their life and this verse provides a promise. In it we are told that the all-powerful God of the universe didn’t just make us and walk away, didn’t just provide a way to have a relationship with Him after we die, but loves us so much that on top of all that, He has a plan for our life right now and His plans are good! This is definitely salve-for-a-hurting-soul status hope! Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”.
For those of you who the idea of death impacts, either because you are scared of death or because someone you love has died, take heart. God’s plan is never cut off early. No one can steal your life if it belongs to God. There is however another event that God has planned for the life of each person He created: “. . . He [God] has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man [Jesus Christ] whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31). Hebrews 9:27 confirms this: “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,”.
Are you ready for the judgment? Though God’s plan for our life is never shortened as we may view it to be, we are told in James 4:14 that “. . . you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”. In comparison to eternity, our life is so incredibly short. This is all the more reason to know absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are going to Heaven. If you already have a relationship with God, continue to surrender to Him and draw close to Him as He works out His plan for your life. If you do not have a relationship with God, I encourage you not to wait another second to have the same life-transforming hope that I have. Simply tell God from your heart that you believe in Him, thank Him for sending Jesus to die on the cross to forgive you of your sins, and ask Him to come into your heart and change your life.