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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Over time, division in healthy churches produces unity, not division. Don’t let the good fruit of conflict silence the apostle’s clear charge: “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you.” Christians don’t aim for conflict; we aim for agreement and harmony in Christ. We can’t let the usefulness of divisions make any of us divisive.

In most cases, cruelty — not wisdom — would have told them to cut the baby in two. How many kings in history would have had the sword brought, not to draw out the true mother, but to violently end the matter? Who would have imagined that thousands of years later, we’d still hold up such a brutal scene as a beautiful model to imitate — as a masterclass in conflict resolution?
Two women came to King Solomon, like so many others, to settle a dispute. They were both prostitutes, so deciding whom to trust wouldn’t be easy. Both had recently given birth to sons, within just a few days of each other. One boy was now dead because of a horrible accident. His mother woke to find she had smothered him while the two were sleeping. Can you imagine the horror when she realized what she had done?
Desperate, she added horror to horror. She took the living son from her roommate’s breast, and laid the cold body of her carelessness there instead. She stirred the heavy storm of guilt into a hurricane. When the other woman woke up, she found the child at her side was dead. After examining the baby more closely, though, she discovered what evil had happened (like any mother would). But how could she prove it? She couldn’t; they “were alone” (1 Kings 3:18). So the two went to court, both declaring, “The living child is mine, and the dead child is yours” (1 Kings 3:22).
We know what the king does next — the jarring way he uncovers the truth. Who would have guessed he’d threaten to have the child cut in two? When Israel heard of the judgment Solomon rendered, they stood in awe of him, perceiving that the Spirit of God was in him (1 Kings 3:28). Can you explain, however, why he was wise to reach for a sword?
Needful Conflict
We might say Solomon was wise because it worked. The true mother proved herself by pleading that the boy be spared, even if that meant he would be raised by another woman (1 Kings 3:26). Likewise, the selfish response of the other woman exposed her treachery. That it worked, however, doesn’t explain why the king was wise (only that he was). Surely the same strategy would have failed in lots of other crises.
What made Solomon wise, in this case, was that he knew to lean into the conflict between them to prove who was who. He pressed on the sensitive issue at hand until each woman revealed what kind of woman she really was. The apostle Paul offers a similar piece of wisdom to the church when he writes,
When you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. (1 Corinthians 11:18–19)
There must be factions among you. In other words, some conflict is necessary for churches to remain healthy. Why? Like Solomon with the prostitutes: to prove who is who. Who’s really here to worship, obey, and enjoy King Jesus — and who’s here for some other reason?
Isn’t Division Bad?
Aren’t all divisions in the church to be avoided, though? After all, the apostle himself says (earlier in the same letter, even),
I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. (1 Corinthians 1:10)
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It was his focus on the eternal issues of life—of issues of meaning—that really hooked me. Nowhere else was anybody I knew talking about these things in the way that Tim was. He illustrated his points through philosophy, art, pop culture and yes, the Bible. But it was a Bible I had never been introduced to, despite attending church and Sunday school every weekend of my childhood. He brought it alive and showed how it was actually relevant to my life.

Tim Keller, one of American Christianity’s giants, passed away this week [May 19, 2023] at age 72.
As some of you may know, I somewhat improbably spent years in the evangelical fold starting in 2005 following the sudden death of my father at age 61 and the passing of my beloved grandmother the year after. It’s hard to imagine that I would have headed down this road but for Tim Keller.
I entered Tim’s church, Redeemer Presbyterian, as a fairly committed atheist. I had long ago dispatched with my Episcopalian upbringing and other than the boyfriend who brought me to church, there were very few religious people in my Manhattan friend group, which consisted primarily of people working in or dedicated to Democratic politics.
Sunday was for brunch, not church.
A year later, I was all in with Christianity. And not just any Christianity—I had signed up for Tim Keller’s brand of evangelical Christianity, or at least what I thought was Tim Keller’s brand of evangelicalism.
My feelings about Tim Keller the person are straightforward: I knew him to be a thoughtful, brilliant, kind person. A devoted husband and father; humble and generous. I was often the beneficiary of his wisdom as I navigated various issues. His wife Kathy, just as brilliant as he, was my Bible study teacher for years. They were intertwined heart, mind and soul—it’s hard to imagine the grief she is experiencing as she faces life without him.
What was it that was so alluring about Tim? David Brooks does a good job of capturing it:
American evangelicalism suffers from an intellectual inferiority complex that sometimes turns into straight anti-intellectualism. But Tim could draw on a vast array of intellectual sources to argue for the existence of God, to draw piercing psychological insights from the troubling parts of Scripture or to help people through moments of suffering. His voice was warm, his observations crystal clear. We all tried to act cool around Tim, but we knew we had a giant in our midst.
He didn’t fight a culture war against that Manhattan world. His focus was not on politics but on “our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control us, that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, that fail to satisfy us even when we get them.”
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