An observed vanity

There are processes at work in your body right now that will, in time, claim your life. If the only purpose you have is to use your breath to achieve some fleeting success or pleasure, how empty that success will be when your chest rises and falls for the last time on this earth.

This truth, when acknowledged, leads inexorably to either hope or despair, with nothing in between. It is unsurprising that when the least blind among the blind realize how little control they have over their destiny, they often choose to end their own lives as both an act of final rebellion and a futile exercise in control. They can’t abide the thought of having terms dictated to them by death, so they choose the “best” death they can dream up — never dreaming, as they should, that despair is completely unnecessary, given we were created to bear God’s image and to bring glory to him; that, in Christ, each and every one of our limited supply of breaths are sanctified to bring glory to Him; that, in Christ, all of the sting and pain of death has itself become empty and vain.