Vaporise

How fleeting life is, that what we just encountered at one afternoon can depart us on the evening of the very same day. And we are not the victims; on the contrary, we are the perpetrators. On one angle, and scream and squirm at the fauna that pass along our tracks, or pluck or destroy in delight at the interesting flora we come across. And then we move to kill bugs even though we invade their natural sanctuary with our environmental holidays, after which it is killing nature in general when we erect our tents, mud houses, private bungalows and eventually multi-storey condominiums. In the hostel that I was staying at, I noticed more squashed brown beetles on the ground than there were previously. Thinking it was just a curious incident, I disregarded it until I chanced upon speaking with a child who was also staying at the hostel, and who confessed he had been stomping on them while he was here. I couldn’t react much after hearing it, since he was only a child, and I simply laughed it off saying that he was a cheeky boy. But in my heart I reflected that it starts with this mindless murder at an impressionable age that we can graduate to cutting whole sections of the forest without as much as a thought. And at that time, we know what we have not only taken away life, we have also killed ourselves. We have been reminded time and again by James in his 5th chapter and 14th verse, “why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes”. We know that our lives are under God’s mercy and judgment, but what makes us think that the lives of His creation are also not under the same, or that we can play God and take away life that He created? Yes, it can be argued that God told the Man in chapter 1 verse 28 of Genesis to “be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground”. But as subjects to our own powers and authorities of earth and of heaven, would we want to be subjects of a tyrannical ruler? “Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the LORD.” Jeremiah 8:7 We are a mist, a vapour, a cloud that will vanish when the wind blows, or when the sun appears. And we are certainly not God that we can take away life, for in fact, God is the wind and the sun that can take us away at any moment. It is hard not be cynical or pessimistic when we know that our lives can be stomped out just like those beetles. One minute they are busy running their own errands, and the next they are struck down by an acute cardiac arrest, or more precisely a foot. One minute we are having fun mamaking with our friends, and the next our friends are the ones giving us a CPR to save our lives. And we can only cry out to the Lord, just as David did, “Show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is.” Psalm 39:4 or “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 And this is wisdom: life is better than death. Like fo’ shizzle. This focus on morbidity only leads us to focus on the grace of life, because why be dead now when you will be eventually anyway? In times of darkness and death, life and breath is even more prevalent. It makes us appreciate our blessings, be thankful for our trials, be grateful for our disappointments, and to love our sorrows. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” Ecclesiastes 9:10