Remember the Eternal

"Arm me with jealous care,
As in Thy sight to live;
And O Thy servant, Lord, prepare
A strict account to give!"*

I was sincerely singing this last Saturday when I remembered an email from a lady that had just come.

She said that early one morning she was going through her usual routine of reading the Word and praying. A little cabin they owned was being gutted and remodeled, and the workers called reporting things that needed her attention.
She was planning to cut prayer short and go over to the work site, when God reminded her of James 4:14: "...what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away" (NASB).

She wrote, "I felt as if God was speaking to me, 'If your life is but a vapor, your prayers, an even smaller fragment of your life, are even less than the vapor, yet so powerful.' I knew I needed to pray and not cut short, or delay, my prayer time. I had a very real sense that my prayers were an eternal fragrant incense, permeating into the recesses of Heaven. And so, by faith, I prayed (and prayed and prayed). 

"Several hours later, I went by the work site. The workers had taken out the paneling. On the sheet rock behind the panel was written, "For what is life? My life or your life? A mist...and then vanishes. I live for the now. James."

"The comment on the sheetrock, 'I live for the now' grabbed my attention. Although not in scripture or perhaps even scriptural, it caused me to contemplate and pray. May I live my life remembering it effects the eternal!"

Dear Jesus, help me to be continually filled with zeal and passion for things eternal.

"So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God" (Rom. 14:12).

*Third verse of Charles Wesley's hymn: "A Charge to Keep I Have"

Aletha