We live in a culture that holds out the glitter of wealth and opportunity and calls us to spend our days pursuing its goods. We live in a culture that presses us to compromise God’s truth to find acceptance and success here and now. But in the face of these temptations, remembering the brevity of life keeps us from getting drawn off course. Remembering the brevity of life keeps us focused on what matters, that we might live a life of wisdom, giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the work of the Lord.

The poet Percy Shelley captured one of the most striking images of the brevity of human life and our tendency to forget it. The pedestal of a great statue reads, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.” But that ancient pedestal sits alone in the desert, forgotten and irrelevant. Trunkless legs stick into the air. The head, with its look of arrogant command, lies knocked off, half buried in the sand. Even the mighty are leveled by time; even their works are impotent beyond the few years of their existence.

The temptation to forget the brevity of life doesn’t belong just to the rich and powerful. Each of us, caught up in the routine of daily life and our sense that we have many years yet to live, easily forgets that our lives on this earth pass quickly and are gone. Just consider the analogies that Scripture uses for human life: a mist, a breath, a shadow, a sigh, grass that withers, and flowers that fade. Those are some of the most ephemeral images on earth. But God’s Word does not emphasize the brevity of life to minimize life’s significance; it does so to focus our hearts on what matters. In doing so, God’s Word offers three specific ways that the brevity of life should shape our priorities.
First, the brevity of life should diminish our efforts to strive after wealth and the things of this world. David writes:
O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am! . . .
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!
Surely a man goes about as a shadow!
Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! (Ps. 39:4–6)
The picture that David paints is a flurry of busyness, of anxious turmoil, in an effort to build up wealth and attain success and security in this life. But as David points out, our lives are a breath and a shadow; we don’t even know who will receive all that we have worked for.
Psalm 39 brings to mind Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 6:7 that we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

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Allow the weight of your depression to dash you upon the Rock of Ages. Press into Christ. Let the sadness press you toward Him. Abandon everything but hope in Jesus. Run into His arms because there is nothing good anywhere else. You have been given clarity that very few people have. You understand that there is nothing good anywhere without God. 

I have noticed a world of difference between visiting the depressed and visiting the physically sick. The physically sick will chat with you and will enjoy a prayer at the end of your conversation about their illness and the medical plan to take care of it. The depressed, on the other hand, want to talk to you about God. They weep over their sins. They look to the words of the pastor as if life were in them. Their eyes contain tear-filled expectations, simultaneously expressing grief and hope.
If we evaluate these types of sicknesses—mental and physical—it is easy to see that one type lends itself to an openness to the Lord. Of course, as Lewis says, “God shouts to us in our pains.” We hear God, like Job, when we physically suffer. But mental pain (that is, depression) makes us alert to God in a heightened way.
If you have cancer, you will think about death. You will worry. You will ask your pastor to pray. You will turn to doctors and hope that they can fix you. Cancer can be a gift, which is why John Piper says, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer.”
But when you are depressed, and the depression does not lift, you are backed into the corner of hell. Behind you are the flames, and no doctor extends a hand to help. There are none to pull you from the flames but Christ.
Your conscience is burdened with the feeling that you are to blame for your predicament. The guilt weighs upon you like a thousand-pound weight. Every thought is another burden added to the weight, increasing the pain until it becomes unbearable.
This pain vents itself in cries of desperation, “God, please help me!” When He does not answer, the weight pushes you through the floor.
People with cancer know nothing of this desperation. People with cancer want to live, but people with depression want to die.
We wonder how Paul was able to say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” We marvel at the humility of John: “He must increase, and I must decrease.” The Psalmist outshines our spirituality on its best day when he says, “There is nothing on earth I desire besides You.” How are these people able to say such glitteringly spiritual things?
They walked through the valley of the shadow of death. They have experienced life without God. Like the title of Martin Lloyd Jones’s book, they have tasted Spiritual Depression.
It is staggering to see how many people are depressed today. Someone recently told me that, on average, Americans are more suicidal than those interned at the Nazi concentration camps. Could this be a grace, a gift of God?
I just heard a pastor say that revival always occurs when a society loses the most hope. When people look around and say to one another, “There is no hope left for us!” The eagles of Christ’s mercy swoop down with healing in their wings.
When we are depressed, we sprint toward the medicine cabinet. When we do not feel well, we turn to the bottle. When anxiety strikes, we open the refrigerator. Like a doctor striking our knee, we have instant responses to depression—and they are always to mask it.
But what if our depression is actually preparation? What if the Lord is preparing our hearts to be humble and meek, like His?
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When the fool is struck by the Word, those with understanding will understand and beware (Pro. 19:25). The lost have seen plenty of capitulation and flip-flopping all around them. What often sets them back, awakening them to grace, is seeing men and women of God stand with conviction for the whole counsel of God without getting red in the face for those portions of Leviticus about shell-fish. The world has seen plenty of cowardice, perhaps it is waiting for Christians who are actually courageous to believe, live, and declare the Word with boldness.

In the years that I’ve been writing publicly, a common contention is that pointing out and knocking down certain worldly viewpoints might be hurtful to people. The frequent rebuff I’ve seen is that Christians are supposed to be loving, not judgy and all that. Or some keyboard warrior will ask, “Why did you pick a fight on this or that issue, shouldn’t Christians be Gospel centered?”
Confronting some cultural nonsense, whether in the church or outside it, will often earn you the chiding of other Christians implying that you need to be more gracious, sweet, and kind. I’d like to address some of these objections, showing why we need twice the courage and half the niceness.
Impotent Gospel-Centeredness
First of all, too often claiming to be “Gospel-centered” has become an excuse to confine the Gospel to the size and scope of a linen closet. You’re not gospel-centered if you’re embarrassed by the Gospel as it is found in Leviticus, or in the hard sayings of Christ, or in the biting rhetoric of the Prophets, or in the salty stories of Judges. To be Gospel-centered actually requires us to be Bible-centered. We must read and receive the whole book.
You can think that John 3:16 is the only verse you need to hop up and down on, but even there, in that famous verse, Jesus clearly lays out the consequences of not believing in the only begotten Son: you will perish. Jesus seems to be implying, trigger warning, that outside of faith in Him there is no meaningful life.
It does no good to be Gospel-centered with an impotent Gospel. The Gospel of Christ is that He demands the whole of your life, your neighbor’s life, and Saudi Arabia’s life. He is Lord of all the earth. It all belongs to Christ. He has commanded us to disciple the nations, not coax them to join our religious LARPing club. Our Gospel is to the whole world, for the whole world.
The Godly Virtue of Picking Fights
Others object that picking a fight, by writing on a controversial topic (which I have been known to do), doesn’t seem very grace-filled. This all depends on if you define grace Biblically, or if you have had it defined for you by the sort of books with the author’s face taking up 90% of the front cover. Grace is proclaiming that God looks upon those in Christ with favor, having forgiven them all their sins. Grace is not molly-coddling folly or sin. Numerous examples of Prophets & Apostles, let alone our Lord Jesus, show that picking a fight can be the most godly course of action. Through these instances of godly fights, we see God’s grace displayed to sinners.
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