Maybe you have seen the story circulating around the internet of an old man who spent a number of weeks on a ventilator fighting this virus. As the story goes (you never know if these are really true), when the man recovered he was presented with an invoice for the time spent on a ventilator and he began to weep. Seeing this, the hospital administration tried to assure him that there were programs that could assist him to pay the bill. However, he explained that his weeping was not because he couldn’t pay, but because he hadn’t been thankful enough for the many years of breathing God’s air that he had been given without charge. You see, the man recognized in that moment that every breath of life is a gift from God.

Neglecting the truth of the gift of life often leads us into the wrong kind of thinking. Such was the case with Baruch in Jeremiah 45:1-5 . God had heard the complaints from Baruch (as stated in verse 3) – “Woe is me now! for the LORD hath added grief to my sorrow; I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.” He was lamenting the fact that his life wasn’t “good”. He was blaming God for the grief and sorrow in his life. There were external factors that were bringing him down during the day and internal factors that were making him restless at night. He felt that he had gotten the short end of the stick and that God owed him something more. In other words, he felt that his work for the Lord should have entitled him to something more than those around him, a special reward IN THIS LIFE.

God’s response to Baruch is not what we might have expected (especially not if you have been listening to many of the preachers of today). Instead of telling Baruch to be patient and wait for his reward, God tells him to stop looking for something better in this life. “Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not” (v.5). God tells him that in the course of always seeking for something more, he was neglecting the very gift of life that he had been given and should have been cherishing.

We each get one life to live in this world and it is our gift from God. Every breath we take and every day we live is something that God is giving us. None of us had anything to do with coming into this world and we can do nothing to remain in it when God chooses for us to go. This is true in an eternal, spiritual sense as well. The Bible tells us that when we are born and made alive in this physical realm, we are dead (because of our sin) in the spiritual realm. Just like our physical life is a gift, so is our spiritual and eternal life. The difference is that the gift of our spiritual life is received by faith in Jesus Christ. Have you trusted in Jesus Christ and know that you have received that gift of eternal life?

For we who have received both gifts (physical and spiritual life), we must be careful not to develop an attitude like Baruch. How quick are we to cry “woe is me” when quarantines come, when hardships happen, when relationships are difficult, and when life simply is not good? We must remember that LIFE is our gift from God. And for those of us who have this new life in Christ, maybe we need to take a lesson from Baruch. Instead of trying to have our “best life now”, may we have the attitude of the apostle Paul – “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)