James says, “for what is your life?…It is even a vapour, appearing for a little while, and then disappearing”. How reducing that is, is it not? How it puts things in perspective. How it makes us see that anyone altogether absorbed with the things that are here is spending time and energy, maybe involving much anxiety, in regard to what in itself has no real substance; a vapour has no substance, or very little, and is passing away, disappearing. I think this is one of the most telling passages in the Scriptures to show what the existence here of man, apart from God, really is, “appearing for a little while and then disappearing”. But every person who has confidence in our Lord Jesus Christ, and an abiding hope in what He has done, who has faith in His blood, that precious blood, is possessed of a life that will never pass away.
Ernest Palmer, Croydon Golden Nugget 229
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