Only Immortal For A Limited Time

 We Are Only Immortal For A Limited Time

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. Luke 12:8

The band Rush has a song called “Dreamline” with lyrics that have become stuck in my mind: 

Learning that we’re only immortal for a limited time.

When we were kids we thought we were unbreakable. That we would live forever. We all wanted to be like the daredevil Evel Knievel. He would use a motorcycle to jump over increasingly more dangerous obstacles. Long rows of cars, buses, even Snake River Canyon, though the latter in a rocket ship. He broke numerous bones, put his life in danger over and over again. It seemed that he was immortal. And we thought the same about ourselves. Flying at full speed on our bikes up homemade ramps, going airborne, and by some miracle not breaking our necks.

When we became teenagers we were no wiser, still thinking we were immortal. I remember my friend driving us in a Chevy van at ninety miles per hour off of the top of Children’s Home Road and doing a “Dukes of Hazzard” with wheels off the ground as if the van had wings and could fly. And again, as I was just shy of twenty years old I remember my friend Bob and I racing side by side at top speed as if we were drag racers flying down County Road 25A at breakneck speed. We were young and stupid and considered ourselves immortal.

Not everyone is so “young and dumb” as my friends and I. Yet I think many people live their lives thinking they will somehow cheat death, or that it is so far removed as to leave them alone. I remember once walking through a local cemetery looking at the gravestones in shock at the age of so many who had died in their youth.

At sixty years old I know for a fact that Rush was right, at least as far as this life is concerned. We are only “immortal” for a limited time here. If you have had dangerous bouts with your health, or have had many loved ones die, your mortality quickly becomes real.

I truly believe we are to live and enjoy our lives without fear and dread of death. Yet we are also to be wise and understand that tomorrow is not promised to us. For the Christian we truly have no need to fear death because we know we have a better home and better things ahead in a very real immortality with Jesus.

Nevertheless, even Christians, including myself, can get caught up in this life and absorbed by the minutia of it. We can let things, experiences, and events, people, places, accomplishments make us blind. We can begin to think like those young foolish stunt devils that we have many years to go and death so far removed as to be not worth considering. It is ironic to me at sixty, realizing it will be a miracle if I make it another decade or two, to meet people in their late seventies and eighties acting as if they have all the time in the world. We must remember that we are only immortal for a limited time, and the clock is running down fast.

My hope in what I share here is not to fix your mind on grim death, but to consider, keep in mind that time is short, how we live and behave matters. And most importantly, where you will live out your true immortality is the greatest and most relevant question you will ever consider. Make that decision soon. Graveyards are filled with people who quickly understood the limits of their mortality.

Prayer: Dear Lord, the clock is ticking for us all. Help us to look at where we will go when our life is at its end, and who will be awaiting us when we get there. Thank You for the gift of immortality through Your shed blood on a Cross for us. Amen.