Your life, what is it? You are no more than a mist, seen for a little while and then dispersing. James 4:14, N.E.B.

We may readily concede that life is like a "mist, seen for a little while." Life escapes its like the disappearing fog. We see it vanish before our eyes. Vapor, mist, fog, clouds, are very illusory. We cannot hold them in our hands and keep them. There is no way to put them in a safety deposit box.

At the same time the clouds and atmosphere can assume fascinating masterpieces of form and color. We have all looked up into the sky and seen them change into superb forms and pictures of grandeur that have called for the best in poetry and painting. Or again, we may be enshrouded by a mist, a dense cloud, or a forbidding fog that obscures the light and beauty of the sky. What makes the difference between beauty and gloom? It is the sun. It paints the clouds with color, illuminates them with brightness and shining rays, with shifting scenes of splendor.

Thus it is with life. It may be a thing of glory or a thing of gloom and sadness. What the sun is to the clouds and to the mist, God is to our lives. Life shines with joy and light, or saddens with darkness, according to our relationship to the Sun of Righteousness. At times we find life to be one of fear, gloom, and anxiety. All seems undesirable. Our lives lack beauty and dignity. The missing factor is Christ, the beauty of His life in ours. When God is in our thoughts, our affections, our desires, and our purposes, life is transformed.

Life in itself without Christ is indeed vapor, destitute of grandeur and soon to pass away. The life that has the Sun of Righteousness shining in the heart acquires the beauty of the rainbow. Our lives are nothing until they are lifted into the presence of Christ.

The mist of life may end in a gutter or in a rainbow. The American Indians have a legend that as the flowers fade in the forest and on the prairie, their lost beauty is gathered into the rainbow and glows again in richer colors than before. But it is no legend that promises us a life of moral and spiritual beauty with God. Then at last we shall find ourselves standing within the beauties of the rainbow about the eternal throne of God.