Letter from the Pastor

A Letter from the Pastor

July 2008

Life is approximately one inch wide.

That isn’t very wide.

It says in Psalm 39:5, “You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.”

As death comes close to us in our congregation and as friends and family wait at deathbeds, life is measured in inches. We wait for each breath. We realize that breath must continue for there to be life. When the breath stops, the margin shrinks to zero. The inch of life is gone. Life is over.

But for us Christians, the margin doesn’t really matter. Our lives---however long or short---are determined and reckoned and calibrated by the Lord of life. With him a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. He is all about life. He knows about its shortness and narrowness. He died to expand its fragile parameters to infinity…and to eternity.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” (Psalm 116:15) Our lives are precious to him. Every second is precious to him. Our last second is precious to him. That is what the word here promises.

This doesn’t make us nervous or apprehensive. Our times are in his hands. That is also what the Scripture promises and assures. In fact, this gives us the luxury of not thinking about the narrowness of life because the one who holds our life in his hands is present and preserving.

It even encourages us in full view of the narrowness of life and the shortness of it to say in prayer to the Lord of life, “Teach us to number our days aright.” (Psalm 90:12) Today? Tomorrow? Thirty years from now? A hundred years from now? We don’t know the number but we know the One who does. He is the keeper of our lives.

And we say the benediction of all God’s people: “This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

(Pastor Eric Hartzell)

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Letter from the Pastor