I've been worshiping to this song the past few days. I purchased the CD this song is on and found it about a week ago; the CD is going to be my study CD. When I heard this song I've replayed it now about a half dozen times. It's moving, compelling, emotion-provoking, powerful. It moves me to want Christ more.

There is a sense about life these days compelling a feeling of hopelessness. There is a reality to the idea that no matter how "good" something goes, there is an end to it; or even worse in the midst of the experience of that really good reality, somewhere, most places, there is utter depravity and sadness. Life in most places on this globe are not all that great. I have sensed this now for a few years, beginning at the loss of my son a little over four years ago. Life is not awesome. In most ways it is hell. The prick in my spirit bringing this thought back to the surface was the visit to a nursing home facility where an aging Episcopalian Priest came up to speak to someone and from outward appearances seems wholly normal. But as he began to speak it sounded as if he wanted to follow up on some work he had delegated but none of his words made a sentence and all of his rambling was incoherent. His dementia is severe, obvious, and killing him. Pouring his life out for the church and his end is met with mental darkness and wasting. How poignant! Christians believe the point of life is the Gospel of Jesus, the gospel changes life and brings hope and healing to a dark and dying world. The irony of this man is he pours his life out for the advancement of the Gospel only to end his life unable to articulate a sentence about this life changing, healing-bringing message. Does he even know what the Gospel is anymore?

I thought of Ecclesiastes . . . meaningless! I thought of the book of Job, speaking of the wicked, "How often are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale?" (Job 21:18 NIV) There is gratitude in being reminded in the shortness of this life. There must be something greater. Lord help us if this is all there is; how grateful one must be to know there will be an end, sometime, to all the dementia, dying, aging, death. As I meditated on this, it made me grateful that God would even tell us there is an end. We do not deserve to know this fact; the knowledge He has given us is not on a need to know basis. He has given us hope. There will be an end to the suffering and loss. How unwise to put my plan for peace and prosperity in the basket of now.