The Word of God reminds us of the shortness of time and of the fact that we shall not live here always. We are in this world for a short time at the longest. How swiftly do our years pass away, yea, faster than a weaver’s shuttle. Before we are aware of it we have lived out our years. As we draw near to the end of another year in time we ought to remind ourselves that we are posting fast to the eternal world — to the unseen world of spirits which is now hidden from our eyes but which will soon be our eternal abiding place.
It is in the light of the great eternity that we will see the shortness of our time here. It is true that many live out their lives in this world without any thought of the eternity to which they are going. This is surely the height of folly. Were we going on a journey from one place to another in this world how diligently we would make preparation for it. How sin has blinded us when we live without a thought of the eternal world! May the Lord be pleased to open our eyes that we may be brought to realise the awful solemnity of passing from time to eternity.
Because time is passing so rapidly, the time is very short that we have to prepare for an endless eternity. None can say that they have time enough to prepare for the eternal world when they see death approaching. We know not what a day or an hour will bring forth. We know not when the messenger of death may arrive on our doorstep to take us away from time to the eternal world. It will be in vain then to plead for an extension of our time here. The hour of our departure has come and we must go hence. We must leave all that we had in this world for we cannot take anything hence. Naked came we into the world and naked shall we return thither. So is the testimony of God’s Word.
What need there is to value time aright. Multitudes undervalue the preciousness of time. It is the time of opportunity for a lost and ruined soul to seek the Lord while He may be found. It is not by a careless search that one is to obtain a blessing but by an earnest and diligent seeking after God with his whole heart. “Ye shall seek Me and find Me,” says the Lord in His own word, “when ye shall seek for me with all your heart.” Diligently, earnestly, importunately must the needy soul seek the Saviour of sinners. Where there is a true seeking after God and after the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, the soul will not cease its seeking notwithstanding many discouragements. The world will put obstacles in the way and the devil will lay snares for the feet of the seeking soul. His own evil heart also will discourage him. Even professed believers will at times hinder instead of encouraging the seeking soul. Yet that soul cannot give up its seeking after God and will never cease to seek after God until it finds what it is seeking — God as its God — God as a reconciled God in Jesus Christ.
The Psalmist who had found the Lord had to say — how short a time I shall on earth remain. My days, he said, are as a handbreadth and again, mine age is in Thine eye as nothing. If that was true of the Psalmist, is it not true also of sinners yet out of Christ? Is it not time for such to seek the Lord until He will send down a blessing upon them? Let us apply to our own soul the truth of the shortness of our days. Let us note each succeeding day, yea, each succeeding hour of each day; yea each succeeding moment of each day with alarm if we be still out of Christ. Let us prize every moment of every day, realising how much hangs upon it.
The year is drawing to a close. Where is the end of the year to find us? Is it to find us a stranger to grace and to God? Is it to find us still outside the kingdom of God’s dear Son? Can it be that after hearing the Word of God and having the Gospel preached to us that we are still in our sin, still without God and without hope in the world?
Oh, let the approaching end of the year by the blessing of God bestir us to seek the Lord while He may be found and to call upon Him while He is near. He is saying to us in His own Word: “Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon.