My Times are in Your Hands
Leif Holmes
Over the course of the last week, I have been reminded of both the brevity and uncertainty of life with the deaths of two people. One, a high school classmate of mine who was a month older than me, died suddenly. She was only 48 and a mother of two teenage daughters. Another, more famous, is NBA legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant who also died suddenly. Bryant was only 41 and a husband and father of four. In neither circumstance did they realize that the year 2020 would be their last.
In tragic situations like these, I think about what the Bible teaches about life and death. James 4:14 states, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” In Psalm 90, Moses writes, “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” So often we can go about life assuming that there will be a tomorrow when there are no guarantees.
Such thoughts might cause one to become worried or even fearful. But that shouldn’t be the case for anyone who trusts and loves Jesus. Jesus asserted, “I am the resurrection and the life . . . and whoever believes in Me will never die,” (John 11:25-26). The reason that those words are so important is because Jesus tasted death for everyone according to Hebrews 2:9, and as a result, there is no need to be fearful or uncertain of our future beyond this life. As Job triumphantly stated, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27).
A few years ago I was driving home on a backroad on a very dark and rainy night. As I came around a corner, I realized I was going too fast and was going off the road. In my attempt to swerve back onto the road I overcorrected and my car slid across the median before flipping over several times and crashing down an embankment. In all happened in just a few seconds. One moment I was driving and the next I was hearing ear-piercing, shattering glass and crunching metal – and then darkness and dead quiet. My first thought was, “Am I alive?” And once I realized I was, my next thought was, “I have to get out of this car before it explodes!” (I had seen that happen way too many times in the movies!) As you can imagine, my adrenaline was racing as I climbed out of the car and scrambled up the embankment. When I reached the top I simply stood there in the darkness and the rain and looked down at the crumpled wreck I had just climbed out of. And in that moment I heard the Holy Spirit say: “My times are in your hands.” I didn’t know at the time, but later discovered that is from Psalm 31:15.
How overwhelming it was to know that God Almighty was right there with me in that moment AND in every other moment of my life too! My times are in His hands! As the famous evangelist George Whitefield wrote: “We are immortal until our work on earth is done.” There is no need to be fearful or worried. And so, in response, let us return again to Psalm 90 and pray: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom,” (v.12).