Man ... Is of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1)

Job expresses something that young people don’t like to think about, middle-aged people rarely think about, and old people are forced to think about ... when life on Earth takes more than it gives, or as Job said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away” (Job 1:21). It’s important that we recognize, in saying this, “Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong” (Job 1:22). 

 Thinking about the inevitable is not pleasant, but it can help us remain humble, reliant on God, and prevent us from holding too dearly to temporary things. We are warned, “do not love the world or the things in the world ... the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17). In light of eternity, the only logical use of time is “Seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:1-2). 

Soon, the only thing that matters will be how you served God in your short time on Earth. God chose “the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom” (James 2:5), but if “you have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter” (James 4:15). The best thing you can do with money is help people get to heaven. “Make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home” (Luke 16:9). Christ goes on to say your eternal salvation is the only thing you own. “If you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?” (Luke 16:12). 

 So, “do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).