The Fragility of Life

I had a large pane of glass that I found useful to cover a seedling bed of pansies. Propped up on bricks, it helped keep the pansy bed warmer as the sun shone through the glass and heated up the soil. When the soil needed moisture, I leaned the sheet of glass up against the fence behind the bed. Since it was winter, the rain did my watering job for me.

A windstorm came up one day when I had the glass up. Passing by, I noticed that the sheet of glass was again lying on the bricks—and all in one piece, too! How glad I was that it didn’t break!

But when this took place a second time, and a third, I forgot how breakable glass is, and soon took it for granted that the wind would blow it safely down each time. I began to think this glass would never break, and didn’t think to take any more precautions. The winter was windy with quite a bit of rain. Many blustery days found my sheet of glass leaning against that fence. The wind had become my friend, I thought.

Then came the day when I learned the lesson of my carelessness the hard way. It was another windy day, and my dad came into the room to inform me that he had just seen that sheet of glass get blown over by the wind—but instead of being a nice flat pane of glass, it now lay in a million pieces. My pane of glass had shattered at last.

But that was only the beginning of my reaping. As the saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Glass lay like snow in the pansy bed and on the nearby sidewalk. Each piece of broken glass was like a finely constructed puzzle, breaking into many smaller pieces if it wasn’t carefully handled. It was nearly a week later before we got most of it cleaned up (some small pieces were still left), but the lesson it taught me still tarries….

How often do you look at life like I did this pane of glass? Maybe you weren’t meaning to be so careless about endangering yourself in the beginning. At the first escape, you were grateful, and promised to be a bit more careful next time. But when nothing horrible happened, you began to take lightly the instruction of your youth. You thought you were doing fine. You were unbreakable and the wind became your friend. But how many lives that began this way are now shattered on the bricks?

I plead of you to consider, to take note of this lesson and apply it to your heart. Life is fragile, whether you have personally experienced it or not. We cannot afford to take chances and waste our time with carelessness. You know not what wind will be your last; so take heed before it is too late!

Have you been instructed in the truth? Don’t waste your time in foolishness and pursuits of this world—that wind only brings heartache in the end.

Life is not meant to be wasted. How we live now will make the difference in eternity.

Do you think you can wait until later? Oh, but life is short and you know not when you shall be called into judgment! The pleasures of youth and the lust of the flesh do not bring satisfaction. What you sow now, you will also reap. You cannot afford to be careless! And who knows but that you will sink so low “while there is yet time” that you find it is impossible to return when the “later time” has come. Oh, be watchful and keep your life, or else you might wake up to the realization that it is too late—and your life lies in pieces about you.

“Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”* (James 4:14)

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”* (John 14:6) “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”* (2 Peter 1:2-4)