365 Days with God - Day 108: Shortsightedness

I'm giving myself a challenge. Read the Bible each day for a whole year, following the ESV Study Guide 1-year plan. Each day, I will post whatever God has revealed to me in His Word, and how it is changing me. A friend of mine once said that nothing has changed her life as much as reading the bible each day - and I'm excited for how this will change me. Join me on an adventure into the heart of God - and day by day, we can learn more about who He is and what that means to us!

- Andy Catts

Day 108, April 7, 2014

Readings: Psalm 108, Leviticus 14:33-57, Isaiah 17, Isaiah 18, 2 Corinthians 12:14-21, 2 Corinthians 13:1-14

And in that day, man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will look on the Holy One of Israel. He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense.
In that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places of the wooded heights and the hilltops, which they deserted because of the children of Israel, and there will be desolation.

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;
therefore, though you plant pleasant plants and sow the vine-branch of a stranger,
though you make them grow on the day that you plant them,
and make them blossom in the morning that you sow, yet the harvest will flee away in a day of grief and incurable pain. (Isaiah 17:7-11)

The day is coming. Despite our greatest desires to ignore the inevitable, we will all meet our maker. Through natural causes or not, none of us will live on this earth for eternity. So what will we value then? Will we have so short of a view that we can't see beyond our own creations? Our former boastings and triumphs will be as nothing in the face of our God.

If this is the future, if this is all of our futures, then why do we spend so much time acting like it will never happen? Why do we go on ignoring reality, living for today? If our actions now affect our standing before God, why are we willing to live life without hope or care for the God who holds our world and our future in His hands?

This is the word that the teenage generation needs to hear. The generation of YOLO and "live like we've got one life, live like we've got one night." This is the word that my generation needs to hear, the generation of identity-seeking and trying to find ourselves in finding meaning for our existence. This is the word that our parents need to hear, a generation who is coming face to face with their own mortality, yet dumps countless dollars into trying to act like death will never come.

But this is not a message of death and destruction. This is a call to remember, to return to the God of our salvation, our maker and Rock of refuge. He is the only one with the answers, the only one who can give meaning to life. There is so much more than our short time here. What are you living for?