The Christian Life: Mist With a Mission

The Grandfather Effect is a gripping new storytelling podcast from Moody Radio’s Brian Dahlen. The podcast follows Dahlen’s family and their rocky road from relational brokenness to reconciliation. The seven-episode series takes you on an emotional journey into their secrets, faith, sins, and attempts at forgiveness. You can listen here.

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Have you ever been to a memorial service for someone you didn’t know very well? A family member? A mutual friend? A co-worker? As your eyes scan the mass of people, you are confronted with the brevity of life and the reality of mortality.

This reckoning with death weaves itself through the Bible. In Job 8, our days on earth are compared to “a shadow.” The Psalms are peppered with pleading:

“Lord make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psalm 39:4)

“As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.” (Psalm 103:15-16)

It almost feels oxymoronic: to sit with the promise that our lives are so short, and yet incredibly important to God. Our years are numbered (Psalm 90), but so is every hair on our heads (Luke 12). Our lives are but a mist (James 4:45), but God took the time to knit us together in our mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5).

What a gift to rest in the knowledge that God knows each of our hearts despite the shortness of our lives. That is a miracle.

In Act 3 of The Grandfather Effect podcast, we hear Brian wrestle with these realities. We hear him come to terms with the fact that his grandfather lived an entire life – a life he knew so little about until it was too late. In the cemetery he has a realization: “I’ve put more effort into getting to know my grandfather after he passed away than he ever did to get to know me while he was alive.”

What a brutal realization. How does one cope with that?

As you listen to the episode, reflect and pray over the following questions…

1. How have I interfaced with death during my life? How has that affected me and impacted the way that I view God?
2. What does God say about my life – its brevity and its importance? Do I really believe these things?
3. In praying over questions 1 and 2, what new posture can I assume toward life? Toward death? Describe this in a word or a phrase.