Jesus Famous With Nate Holdridge

  “When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath! Selah” (Psalm 39:11 ESV). Inhale, then exhale. The lungs expand and retract, the good stuff in, the bad stuff out. All day long, during sleep, while awake, your body breathes. You do it without thinking. A breath occurs, and you do not remember it; its brevity is astounding. Psalm 39 is full of statements affirming the brevity of life. "Each of us is but a breath," says the psalmist. Exhaled, gone, and momentary. He wrote of his end, the measure of his days, the fleeting nature of his life. He felt his days were a few handbreadths in length, nothing before God. He was a guest and a sojourner in God's great world. Life, the psalmist sang, is short. “Mankind is a mere breath!” But how ought we respond to the brief nature of our earthly sojourn? If life is short, if God lives in every generation but we only live in ours, if we are but a microscopic dot on the timeline of human his