Read
One Day at a Time
1I thought about these things. Then I understood that God has power over everyone, even those who are wise and live right. Anything can happen to any one of us, and so we never know if life will be good or bad. 2But exactly the same thing will finally happen to all of us, whether we live right and respect God or sin and don't respect God. Yes, the same thing will happen if we offer sacrifices to God or if we don't, if we keep our promises or are afraid to make them.
3It's terribly unfair for the same thing to happen to each of us. We are mean and foolish while we live, and then we die. 4As long as we are alive, we still have hope, just as a live dog is better off than a dead lion. 5We know we will die, but the dead don't know a thing. Nothing good will happen to them—they are gone and forgotten. 6Their loves, their hates, and their jealous feelings have all disappeared with them. They will never again take part in anything that happens on this earth.
7So be happy and enjoy eating and drinking! God decided long ago that this is what you should do. 8Dress up, comb your hair, and look your best. 9Life is short, and you love your wife, so enjoy being with her. This is what you are supposed to do as you struggle through life on this earth. 10Work hard at whatever you do. You will soon go to the world of the dead, where no one works or thinks or reasons or even knows anything.
11Here is something else I have learned:
The fastest runners
and the greatest heroes
don't always win races
and battles.
Wisdom, intelligence, and skill
don't always make you healthy,
rich, or popular.
We each have our own share
of misfortune.
12None of us know when we might fall victim to a sudden disaster and find ourselves like fish in a net or birds in a trap.
Reflect
There is such a thing as disaster. The structure of things collapses, suddenly and without warning. The market crashes and your forty years’ security is erased. A dark spot appears on a routine x-ray. The child is miscarried. The father is killed by the roadside bomb, far away. There is such a thing as disaster, and grief that will not be comforted.
These things do not happen because we have sinned, or because our faith was too weak to save us. They simply come, out of the dark, and they take, and they return to the dark, and we don’t know why, except for an abiding sense that the world is not the place it was intended to be. We were not born to live in uncertainty. We were not born to die. But we live in the dark, and we die without knowing why.
But in that same darkness there is God. There is a Someone, just as vast and just as unknowable, who comes out of the dark to bind up our hurts and to comfort the mourner. There is a voice that sings our keening souls to rest. There is a mystery that walks between us and the void.
By faith, we take the hand of that Mystery, though we cannot see his face. By faith we learn his name. By faith we are lead by that unknowable Goodness through the valley of the unknowable horror. By faith we trust that when our bodies fail us at last and we fall into the last darkness, He will find us there, and all that’s wrong will be made right again.
Respond
Father God, By your redeeming grace death has lost its power of us. Because of you, we do not need to fear death and disaster. Please help me to live like this today, to fear nothing but you yourself. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Mike Bonikowsky
Mike Bonikowsky began looking at books as soon as he could sit up. Eventually he learned to read them, and has not been able to stop. One day he realized that people wrote the words in the books, and he began to write his own. He has not been able to stop that either. He lives with his wife and child in Melancthon Township, Ontario, where he writes his words in the basement.