Power of a Dedicated Life


What is your life? It is even a vapor that appeared for a little time and then vanisheth away.--Jas. 4: 14.

In reading this passage I used to pass lightly over this metaphor. It did not seem to me to present a very promising outlook upon life. The only thing I saw in it was a reminder of life s brevity. But I see in it now something more than that. If life is like a vapor, then life is power. Thin as it is, quickly as it vanishes away, when rightly controlled and used, vapor is one of the most powerful of forces. As a witness to what vapor can do when confined and harnessed, see that mighty railway engine yonder, with its long and heavily loaded train of cars, speeding along on its tracks of steel at the rate of one hundred miles an hour!

Here, then, in this vapor metaphor, we have a picture, not only of the briefness of man s life, but of the mighty power his life is intended to be. If a man can be tied up to a great task, if he can be captured and used as an engineer captures and uses vapor, his life may be turned into a tremendous force for God and humanity.

Life is the gift of God and is divine. This conception of life dignifies every quality and every act. To those who thus conceive life, the mere fact of living becomes a sacred thing, and the responsibility for the use of life merges into the gladness and joy of living--they possess a sense of significance and high purpose.

There is no human life so poor, so small, so humble, as not to hold many a divine possibility. This thought should be a challenge to the least of men to develop to the fullest the qualities with which God has endowed them and to make the most of their opportunities and possibilities.

Life is for work, work in partnership with God to the end that we may be a blessing to the world. We are here to glorify God and help one another to be the kind of persons God meant us to be, to help forward His cause.

Though our days are short and soon gone, we need not allow them to vanish away into nothingness. There is no reason why any life should be a poor, useless, wasted thing. Life has too many values and too many possibilities to be wasted. Let life be harnessed and dedicated, and it will become powerful and useful--even as vapor.