Birth is by God’s design. All life is his and is in his hands. He chooses when and where we’re born and into what circumstances, family, religion, and country. Death is also God’s. After all, he conquered it. As 1 Corinthians 15:54 says, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
But in between the first and last years are those years that will be signified on my gravestone by a simple little mark, a dash between the two dates that are the decrees of God.
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,” the Lord says in Revelation 1:8. And again in the same book, 22:13, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.”
Oswald Chambers, in Shade of His Hand, comments, “It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy.”7
I didn’t chose to be born, nor do I know the hour of my death. My first hour was almost four decades ago. I have no way of knowing if the latter is to be in four days, or in another four decades.
“In between those limits,” Chambers reminds us, “man makes his own distress or joy.”
How can this be? How can I find joy when bad things are woven into that dash, and so much of life is out of my control?
God never promises happiness on this earth. He gives joy instead to the heart that is fully focused on him. His joy is a kind of serene and quiet peace that the world would counterfeit in any number of ways and call happiness.
The days we live are a mere dash between the two dates that will mark our sunrise and our sunset. The great rush of years as time sweeps on often seems to make it an actual dash indeed. We have little to say, sometimes, in how things turn out. But one choice we do get to make. We choose whether we will set our hearts on the things of God or on the things offered by the prince of the world. In this way we manufacture our own distress or joy.
Thomas Carlyle described it like this: “One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.”8
What will we do with that little gleam of time which is given us? How will we repay God for that gift, those years of the dash? By serving him with love and obedience? Or by rejecting the message of the cross and the invitation of the crucified?
He gives us the right to decide.
And to those who have chosen to believe in him, he says in Revelation 1:17: “Fear not; I am the first and the last.”
Fear not. He orchestrated our beginning. He will see to the end. Fear not.
| Prayer | Reflection |
| Lord, I have chosen to serve you during these years between the dash. Please do not let me turn away from the vows I have made to you. | Today is the beginning of the rest of my life. How can I strengthen my desire to follow Jesus? |