A prayer when the brevity of our lives confronts us

This is a prayer of Scotty Smith's published on the day following the death of Kobe Bryant, the famous US basketball player and 8 others in a helicopter crash. You can find it originally published here:  The death of a sports icon & the rest of our lives   (Scotty Smith is the founding pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, USA)

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Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (James 4.13-14)

   

Heavenly Father, Kobe Bryant’s death yesterday stunned, saddened, and sobered many of us. A mere 41 years old, already possessing 1000 times over what most will own in a lifetime.       

Yet this Scripture reminds us that our lifespan isn’t very long at all. We’re more like a brief mist than an ageing oak. 

You’ve numbered our days; how would you have us live the rest of our lives, Father? 

By the light of the Gospel, what should we spend more time doing, and less time wasting? Change our price-tags—re-calibrate our values. 

What have we been putting off that really matters to you? 

Where in Jesus’ story of redemption and restoration would you have us invest more of ourselves? 

Where should we spend more of our days, and less of our worries? 

With whom should we spend face-to-face and heart-to-heart time? 

What relationships have we wrongly allowed to claim and drain us—mentally and emotionally?  

Who are we still holding hostage by our unforgiveness and pain? 

Father, we know we’re not going to merit more of your affection by doing a better job with any of these things. None of these questions has a scorecard attached to it. It’s Jesus’ performance and record we boast in. BUT your grace frees us to ask the right questions and live a more Jesus-honouring, Gospel-declaring, freedom-revealing life. 

Help us, Father, and be with those most directly impacted by Kobe Bryant’s death.

So very Amen, we pray, in Jesus’ matchless and magnificent name.