"How Hard Can That Be?"

1st Peter 1.17b NAS

“…conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth.”

I am intrigued by the phrase “the time of your stay on earth.” The verse implies life (as we know it) will come to an end. My life had its beginning approximately nine months prior to 3:04 a.m. on October 6, 1952 in Denison, Texas. My parents were excited to bring me into this world as my birth announcement suggests...

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That was the beginning of “the time of [my] stay on earth.” Exactly twelve years ago, on November 3rd, 2010, I knelt by my mother’s hospice bedside and whispered in her ear, “Go be with Jesus. Go be with Dad.” Then I prayed, “Oh Jesus, receive my mom into heaven.” Mom died, and that was the end to “the time of [her] stay on earth.”

I watched my precious wife take her last breath at 12:14 p.m. on August 30th, 2015. I fell on her lifeless body and wept. She was my best friend and the greatest human I ever knew. Adonica died, and that was the end to “the time of [her] stay on earth.”

Like my all my ancestors, grandparents, Mom and Dad, and wife, my life is just an eensy-weensy speck on eternity’s continuum. I am almost unnoticeable and certainly quite forgettable. No one will think or speak of me or find any evidence of my existence a generation or two after I’m gone. I’m a singular, tiny ‘blip’ on the EKG screen of history. As James once said:

“You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”
James 4.14b NAS

My family and I traveled to Hawaii in January 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed our stay with Resort Quest at Papakea in Maui. We checked in on a Monday and left on a Tuesday one week later. In the broad scope of our lives, that week will play a very small role. Its memory is swallowed up by the 2,767 weeks of my life preceding vacation week and the thousand or so hopefully to follow.

Similarly, my entire life is virtually lost in the infinite volume of eternity. I checked into Hotel Earth and I will definitely check out. There’s a beginning and an end to “the time of [my] stay on earth.” Thankfully, God is a big God. He is “intimately acquainted with all my ways” (Psalm 139.3b). He will remember me long after I vanish from this planet. He even remembered who I was long before I arrived here. God actually foreknew me (Romans 8.29; 11.2); that is, He knew the exact number of hairs on my head today trillions of light years before He created the world I now inhabit. God’s knowledge of me; well, it’s incomprehensible,  unimaginable, almost, but not quite, beyond belief!

There’s a beginning and an end to “the time of your stay on earth.” I knew nothing of the first half of eternity. I wasn’t there. I only existed as a thought in the mind of Christ. However, I will enjoy the second half with Jesus forever and ever. He asks very little of me…

“…you should conduct yourselves with true reverence throughout the time

of your temporary residence (on the earth, whether long or short).”
1st Peter 1.7 The Amplified Bible

In the light of eternity and with the power and presence of Jesus living within me… how hard can that be?