By Chris WittsThursday 5 Jan 2023Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
If you’re a bit older in years like me, you might remember the name Arthur Rubinstein. He was a Polish born American pianist and composed some really wonderful music, and actually, he’s widely considered to be one of the greatest classical pianists of the 20th century. Well, Rubinstein died in 1982, had a very, very successful career, but going back to 1908 as a young man, he was living in Berlin in a hotel room. He was lonely, no friends hungry, and he owed money.
And at that time his career was going nowhere. He actually felt terrible. He just didn’t want to live. But he got over that awful experience. And Rubinstein? Arthur Rubinstein never forgot that. And so he made sure as he got older and life went on that he said to people, Make sure your love life.
When I read that story, it prompted me to ask the question, “What are you doing with your life? Do you love life, or do you hate life? Do you have any aim in life?” And then there are others who really don’t care as long as they do three things. And this is what the Bible talks about to eat, drink and be merry. In other words, just to get on and enjoy yourself. And in Proverbs 27 Verse one
in the Bible in the Old Testament says Never boast about tomorrow. You don’t know what will happen between now and then. That’s Proverbs 27:1. The point is, we don’t know what life will offer us or so I think we should carefully think about life, whether we’re using it, whether we’re wasting it was Abraham Lincoln who said that in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
Well, tragically, Abraham Lincoln’s own life was cut short, but his legacy, of course, lived on. So living like there’s no tomorrow for God will ensure that you give your life away purposely in worthwhile things that you do that you don’t waste life or hoard things up when you think about it. I think life is short and it’s really too short to be wasted. Who knows what tomorrow’s going to bring? We’re here every day of accidents that happened innocent people are killed.
Now these people, they all had plans, but they were interrupted by tragedy and death. And then, in the New Testament in James 4:14, we read – “What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It’s nothing more than a mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears.” So life is too significant not to be shared. So think about it. There’s so much variety and goodness, things that you can do to help other people. It’s not much fun living on your own, so life is sacred. It’s to be invested properly. There’s a Christian song around that’s called ‘Time in a Bottle, and the words are these – ‘If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing I’d like to do is to save every day till eternity passes away just to spend them with you. If I could make days last forever, if words could make wishes come true, I’d save every day like a treasure. And then again, I would spend them with you.’ That’s a nice song. Come to think of it, if someone could invent and market time bottles, I’m sure that would make a lot of money.
Well, the problem is, we can’t save time. We we must spend the time 24 hours in one day, Jesus told the story, and you could have a look at it in Luke 12 about a rich man. He had a big crop and he said, I haven’t got enough place to store this a large enough place He said, “I’ll tear down my barns and I’ll build bigger ones and store all my grains and then I’ll just take life easy.” But God said to him, “You fool, tonight you’ll die and then who will get what you’ve stored up?” So the problem with this guy was that he hadn’t shared his wealth. He was a very self-focused person. So I think there’s a good lesson there.
Let’s Pray
Lord help us not to waste life, but to see it as a beautiful gift from you, amen.