1 

“‘Lord, make me to know my end,

And what is the extent of my days,

Let me know how transient I am.

Behold, Thou hast made my days as handbreadths,

And my lifetime as nothing in Thy sight,

Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.’  (Selah).”

Yesterday I spent time sorting through old files/papers.  There were many things that went back as far as my days at the U of M, over 20 years.  Some things seem as just yesterday.

There will come a time when I will either be confined to a rest home and/or will die.  My files and papers, the records of a life, will be thrown out.  A life as a breath.

                  To live this breath of time to the glory of God.

At BC, John shared a great truth: God is just in His justifying us in Christ. 

We want God’s mercy and grace, but we don’t often want His justice.  It is for fear of what it will bring us. 

God can and does deal with us justly, in all His holy justness, and we are not utterly destroyed, because of the justness of Christ’s work.  It is an awesomely big thing that Christ did, and the depth of it is beyond understanding.  Only Christ, the Son of God, God Himself, could justify all the sins of all of humanity for all of time. 

Rm 8 v30

“…and whom He called, these He also justified…”

1Cr 6 v11

“…but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but your were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.”

Rm 8 v33,34

“Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?  God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?  Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.”

An awesome, ununderstandable, glorious, freeing, wondrous, beautiful thing.  My God.

When Christ was crucified, His hands were open.

The nails of the cross were driven through open hands.  There was nothing Christ was clinging to.  Hands with nails cannot cling, cannot clinch, cannot hang on.

He gave it all up, all that He was in God, for sinful and sin-filled man. 

Who am I to cling when He did not?