“The heart has reasons that reason does not know.” -Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, French mathematician, physicist, philsopher, inventor, writer

 “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.” – Psalm 150:6

 An ER doctor once told me, “You have about four minutes of oxygen in your body. Without a beating heart, you have only those few minutes before life slips away—unless someone intervenes.”

Four minutes. That’s shorter than most songs on the radio. Shorter than it takes to brush your teeth. In medical terms, it’s the space between life and death.

Spiritually, we aren’t promised four minutes. We aren’t promised one more heartbeat. James 4:14 reminds us, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring… you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”

 CPR gives a person a few more minutes of life. Spiritually, Jesus did far more—He gave His own life to bring us from spiritual death to eternal life.

 God’s plan is four and more. He offers forever.

Every single breath we take is a gift from God. We inhale because He allows it and exhale because His mercy sustains us. Acknowledge the brevity of mortal life. We are mortal beings with a sense of the immortal. We know our bodies are fragile, yet we live as though something in us is unbreakable. That “something” is the soul—the sense that who we truly are isn’t bound by bone and breath. 

Paul in 2 Corinthians 4: “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Risk to the body is never ultimate loss if the soul is rooted in God.  Fear shrinks life to the space between heartbeats-the four-minute fright. But faith stretches life to the horizon of eternity.  “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart…”-Ecclesiastes 3:11a  Everything is as God made it, not as it appears to us. We are to redeem every minute. 

Prayer: 

Lord, thank You for every breath You give me. Help me to live in the awareness that my time here is short. Teach me to spend my minutes loving You and others, speaking truth, and walking in gratitude. May I live with my heart fixed on You. Amen.