When you are a child time seems to go on forever. Your parents will always be there, you'll always have your friends, and you will always have plenty of time; or so it seems.
Then you learn that pets die and friends aren't always forever. Stores and homes that you thought would be there forever are probably going to be gone in the next thirty to forty years. Your parents, invincible as they seem, grow old and soon you find that you're on the same conveyor belt of time as they are.
Solomon wrote about life being vanity in the book of Ecclesiastes. He wrote,
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
Ecclesiastes 1:2-4
Our lives are not forever on this earth. The castles we build today will be someone else's home tomorrow. We can spend a lifetime building an empire for ourselves and our kids only for it to be usurped by bad spending habits or a bad economy. Anything we do as finite human beings for our own selves will pass away, and so will we.
However, Jesus offers us hope for our vain plight. The Bible says,
And when He had called the people unto Him with His disciples also, He said to them, whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Mark 8:34-36
God is offering you a purpose today, tomorrow and forevermore. You are created to serve Him in all our ways. People were created to live forever serving God, that's why things like the passing of time never set well with us. It reminds us that our lives are measured out. In the Bible it says,
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has planted eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
God put eternity in our hearts so that we might long for something more, to search for Him. Once we have found Him our purposes become His purposes. Suddenly we can work for a kingdom that won't pass away or cease to exist with time. What we build for God holds true meaning in this life and the results last for generations, even on this earth. All the idle things that this world would like you to do will be judged by God at the end of your life. And they will gain you nothing.
I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him.
Ecclesiastes 3:14
Our lives may be a vapor but if we give our lives to God then it can really mean something. Our worldly goods will perish in only a few decades, jobs can be replaced and money can be spent. The gift of living a life of godliness and serving His kingdom is the only thing that will last forever.
