Enjoy the gifts, even as they slip through your fingers. Enjoy them for what they are, while you have them. Celebrate the day you’re in, right now. Live in the light of God’s glory, and rise to meet him, knowing that nothing on this earth can ever last, and nothing in God’s generous, eternal promises to his children can ever fade away.

I stood at the window with my coffee in hand, enjoying the unique stillness of a Saturday morning. The clouds in the eastern sky were blushing, in anticipation of the sun’s imminent arrival. Between me and them, a mist was rising, like the earth’s exhaled breath—growing, shifting, and dispersing, glowing in the golden morning glory. A breath. A vapour. This is what King Solomon called life itself, in the book of Ecclesiastes. Like your own breath in the crisp winter air—you can see it and feel the warmth of it, but the one thing you can never do is hold it.

You might think that King Solomon was a pretty depressed guy to say things like this. Fair enough—he does say at one stage that he “hated life” because of how quickly everything you do and build and work for and love fades and disperses, especially after you’re gone (Ecclesiastes 2:17ff). He saw life honestly. Realistically. How can we argue? Look at the generations before us, and how quickly one passed into another and another and now we’re here and we’re already passing into the next generation and the vapour is rising and the wind is picking up but we’ve got these few glorious moments in the golden sunshine—and what will we do with them? The wise King said that vapour-life is not a curse if you learn to enjoy it (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20). But can you really enjoy life, when you see how transient it is? When it slips through your fingers no matter how tightly you clench them? Yes, you can.

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