Reformed Devotion #20: Dust In the Wind

'His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish.' (Psalm 146:4)

'One man lays out his thoughts about laying up money; his meditations are how to raise himself in the world, and when he has arrived at an estate, often God blows upon it, Hag. 1:9. His care is for his child, and perhaps God takes his child away, or if they live, they prove a cross. Another meditates how to satisfy his ambition, 'Honor me before the people,' 1 Sam. 15:30. Alas, what is honor - but a meteor in the air; a torch lighted by the breath of people, with the least puff blown out! How many live to see their names buried before them? When this sun is in its meridian splendor - it soon sets in a cloud.

Thus fruitless are those meditations which do not center upon God. It is but to carry dust against the wind. But especially at death; then a man sees all those thoughts which were not spent upon God. All worldly, vain thoughts, in the day of death perish and come to nothing. What good will the whole globe of the world do at such a time? Those who have revelled out their thoughts in absurdities will be but the more uneasy; it will cut them to the heart to think how they have spun a fool's thread. A Scythian captain having, for a draught of water, yielded up a city, cried out: 'What have I lost? What have I betrayed?' So will it be with that man when he comes to die, who has spent all his meditations upon the world; he will say, What have I lost? What have I betrayed? I have lost heaven, I have betrayed my soul.

Should not the consideration of this fix our minds upon the thoughts of God and glory?