Will we listen to the voice that tells us to exist solely for the present moment and the pleasures of this life, or will we listen to the voice with a staff in his hand and a veil on his face? The voice that would have spent time with God–face to face–as a friend? The voice that says to use your time wisely since you don’t know how much you have. One of these voices is well acquainted with the character of the Lord. This voice knows that eternity is coming and that our present life is as fleeting as a vapor. That the next life will last forever.

5,409 days. That’s how long my dear wife lived on this Earth. When we were dating, we obviously had no idea. When we got engaged, there were no mystical revelation. And when we got married, this number certainly wasn’t written on the back of the marriage certificate for us to see.
In our twenties we were rather unaware. Most of our thirties passed normally. But cancer struck when she was 38 and death was suddenly part of our thoughts about the future. She would end up living four more years. Chemotherapy would work excellent and she would carry on. But one year ago the unwelcome guest would visit again. This time cancer never left. My wife lived 15,409 days. How would we have lived differently if we had a ticker counting down each day. What if we knew when we got married that she only had 8,174 days left? What would we do differently? Or when our first child was born, would knowing she only had 3,577 days left have changed the myriad of decisions we would make as we raised our children?
Some would object to this way of thinking. With all the swagger of Wayne and Garth, they would cry “live in the now!” Why waste time worrying, just live! Live your life “authentically” as you go from day to day. But another voice would disagree. With, perhaps, his staff in hand and maybe a veil on his face, he would say the opposite. “Teach us to number our days, oh Lord, that we might get a heart of wisdom.”
Psalm 90
In Psalm 90 Moses declares four characteristics of God and what our response should be. In verses 1-2 he speaks of the eternality of God.
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It may seem odd to call a catastrophe good, but Tolkien argues that “the eucatasrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.” In the Gospels, Tolkien writes, we find “the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe.” There is no greater tragedy than the unjust execution of the Son of God and no greater good than the salvation that came about as a result of Christ’s death. The staggering thing about the Gospels, however, is that “this story has entered History.” In other words, it really happened! This has staggering implications for what it means to be and to make disciples of Christ. Because Christ conquered Satan, sin, and death, we can as well.

Christ’s command to his apostles to go and make disciples (Matt. 28:16–20) is intended for all his followers. Every Christian must think carefully about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and to make a disciple of Jesus. Though the commission remains unchanged since Christ first uttered it, each new generation encounters contexts and challenges for discipleship that are both old and new. This reality becomes clear if we look at the youth in our society and begin to ask how we might best form them into disciples of Christ. There has been an alarming, well-documented rise in loneliness, depression, anxiety, mental health disorders, and suicides among children and adolescents over the last two decades—not to mention “the great dechurching.” For me, as a high school teacher and a parent of young children, these trends are particularly terrifying. How do we make disciples of children who might be struggling with debilitating depression or doubts? How do we make disciples in a context where these increasingly common struggles press on us as parents and teachers alongside all the typical struggles of being sinful human beings making disciples in a fallen world?
Consumer or Contributor?
Recently, I was struck by an interesting observation from counselor and therapist Keith McCurdy. In over three decades of working as a therapist, he has found that a person’s mental health generally correlates to where they fall on a sliding scale from “consumer” to “contributor.” The farther down the consumer side, the less healthy they tend to be. I wondered, could McCurdy’s observation shed light on how we as Christians think about making disciples—especially of our children?
Since we believe we’re creatures made in the image of a creating God, McCurdy’s observation should come as no surprise. But we often forget a fundamental fact about being human: We were created to create. We exist to “glorify God and enjoy him forever,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism famously puts it; a key part of our calling to bring glory to God is to bless our neighbors, to contribute in productive, valuable, meaningful ways to our communities. Adam was commanded to fill and subdue the earth. He was to be fruitful and multiply, creating a community that would exercise dominion over creation. However, Adam chose a shortcut to knowledge. Instead of learning through experience over a period of time, he sought to gain the knowledge of good and evil through a single bite. He would not earn or create knowledge. He would, literally, consume it. In fact, the Latin root for our word consume, consumere, means “to eat.” God had blessed Adam with all he needed for life, but he chose to reject God’s provision and consume the fruit. By this choice, Adam condemned and corrupted himself and his posterity. Evil entered the world. The image of God was broken and polluted by sin.
For us who live east of Eden, we’re tempted to believe that we exist primarily to consume rather than contribute something good to the world. In believing this lie, we too have become less human than we ought to be. It’s no wonder so many spiritual, mental, and relational maladies have skyrocketed in a culture that not only enables but encourages the acquisition of material wealth and pleasurable experiences more than perhaps any before us in history. In fact, modern society often deems the possession of wealth—whether in the form of money, prestige, a “following,” or experiences—as the ultimate sign of greatness. What we consume may not always be forbidden fruit, but it just as easily tempts us to believe it will make us “like God.”
Becoming a Dragon
These thoughts floated about in my head as I drove to work one morning listening to J. R. R. Tolkien’s much-loved story The Hobbit. I was struck by dwarven king Thorin Oakenshield’s description of dragons:
“Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically forever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value; and they can’t make a thing for themselves, not even mend a little loose scale of their armour.”
In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, dragons are the ultimate consumers. They hoard their treasure for the sole purpose of possessing it. They don’t offer anything to society; they take all they can and give nothing in return. They don’t enjoy their plunder, either, since they have no ability to discern good from bad or beautiful from ugly. All they seem to care about is more—how much they have and how much it might be worth.
Tolkien’s description of a dragon feels eerily familiar. How often do we approach life and work with the goal (or at least the secret desire) to accumulate wealth far beyond what we realistically need for a stable and enjoyable life? Every time we justify less than honest means of acquiring something, we become more dragon and less human; every time we store up wealth from selfishness or insecurity, we become more like Smaug sprawled jealously over his treasure hoard. The more we’re focused on amassing and consuming, the less we’re able to contribute truth, beauty, and goodness to the lives of those around us.
Tolkien’s friend and fellow Oxford don C. S. Lewis illustrated the dark reality of being consumed with consumption in a poem called “The Dragon Speaks.” In the poem, the dragon tells us his life story. He recalls hatching from his egg, “I came forth shining into the trembling wood,” and reminisces about his “speckled mate” whom he loved. This love, however, did not stop him from eating his lover—one of his great regrets: “Often I wish I had not eaten my wife.” Yet we discover the dark reason for the dragon’s remorse: eating his wife left him with sole responsibility for watching over his gold. He never sleeps; he only leaves his cave three times a year to take a drink of water, terrified someone will steal from him. He becomes a prisoner in his own home, a captive of greed and fear. The poem closes with a dark and malevolent prayer:
They have not pity for the old, lugubrious dragon.
Lord that made the dragon, grant me thy peace,
But say not that I should give up the gold,
Nor move, nor die. Others would have the gold,
Kill rather, Lord, the Men and the other dragons;
Then I can sleep; go when I will to drink.
The dragon’s obsession with his gold turns him into a murderous, lonely, pathetic character. His speech leaves us not in terror but full of pity for his sad existence. His obsession with treasure, his consumerism, has left him nothing but selfish anxiety. While our children’s frequent anxiety, loneliness, fear, and cynicism may not be directly caused by a personal dragon-like consumer mentality, they are certainly indirectly suffering the effects of such a mentality in the culture all around them.
This has important implications for discipling them. At the very least, we must teach and train our children to hold loosely to the things of this world. They must see them rightly: as good gifts from God, but not as ends in themselves. God is the ultimate good. Communion with him is the true goal. God’s kingdom is greater than ours. And, of course, forming our children into disciples that seek God’s kingdom, first and foremost, starts with our personal example. We will struggle to make disciples of Christ if we ourselves are more dragon than disciple.
Jesus and Dragons
Jesus warned us about the danger of becoming dragons. He told a story about a rich man who was a wildly successful farmer (Luke 12:16–21). The man had no place to store the enormous harvests he was enjoying year after year; so each time his barns got full, he decided to level them and build bigger ones in their place. Afterward, the rich man, feeling safe and secure, congratulated himself: “Soul, you have ample good laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
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As we face challenges in this life and in ministry, we should never despair; we should always rejoice in the fact that God whom we are worshiping, and God whom we are waiting upon is God who is on the throne reigning above all things. He has the will and all power to fulfill his will; so his plan and promises will never fail. Dear Christians, you who are the true offspring of Abraham and the heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29), take heart, our God reigns!

A friend asked: “Will Jesus Christ reign in future or is he reigning now?” I response to the question, biblically the Lord Jesus Christ is currently reigning together with the Father in Heaven until the consummation of all things, then after the renewal of all things he will reign eternally (Mathew 28:18; 1 Corinthians 15:25–28; Hebrews 1:3–4; 1 Peter 3:22). Dr. R. C Sproul has summarized Christ kingship well with the following words:
“As a King, Christ fulfills Old Testament prophecies of an eternal kingdom for David and his seed. In Christ the fallen booth of David is restored. The kingdom of God has not been utterly postponed to the future. Though that kingdom has not yet been consummated, it has been inaugurated and it is a present reality. It is now invisible to the world. But Christ has already ascended. He has his coronation and investiture. At this very moment he reigns as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Jesus is enthroned at God’s right hand, and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him [Mathew 28:18]. It is a profound political reality that Christ now occupies the supreme seat of cosmic authority. The kings of this world and all secular governments may ignore this reality, but they cannot undo it [Psalm 2:1–12; Acts. 4:25, 26]. The universe is no democracy. It is a monarchy. God himself has appointed his beloved Son as the preeminent King. Jesus does not rule by referendum but by divine right. In the future every knee will bow before him, either willingly or unwillingly [Philippians 2:5–11). Those who refuse to do so will have their knees broken with a rod of iron (R. C Sproul, 1997, p.114)”.
After defeating Satan through his sacrificial redemptive death and triumphant bodily resurrection, he ascended and seat at the right hand of the Father (Colossians 2:15; 1 Peter 3:22). On the right hand of the Father, there Christ is reigning over all until he has put all enemies under his feet (1Corithians 15:25–28). He will come back to judge all the living and the dead, to gather his people to himself, to defeat and destroy all his enemies, to renew all things and to consummate his eternal kingdom and then reign forever and ever (John 5:24–30).
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