LONGEVITY?

 

LONGEVITY?

How long is “long life”?

It is practically quantified based on man’s earthly experience over time.

This passage of time is measured with man’s unit of time measurement using the clock and calendar, and is graduated into: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, generations, etc.

Historically, life expectancy has reduced drastically from somewhere in the neighborhood of (but has never been up to) 1,000 years to barely ten percent of that number, approximately (yet often not up to, and in rare cases barely a few decades above) 100 years.

In Ancient Bible times, the man who was reported to have lived the longest life died at the age of 969 years of age. His name was Methuselah the son of Enoch, the father of Lamech, and the grandfather of Noah. (The Holy Bible in Genesis 5:27)

In contemporary times, “the oldest man ever was Jiroemon Kimura from Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years 54 days and died in 2013. The world's oldest living woman, and oldest living person, is Japan's 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka.” (BBC, 25th of August 2024)

Geographically, the average life expectancy differs from broad ranges of (roughly) between 60-90 years in more developed nations to 50-70 years in less developed countries, due largely to environmental factors.

Spiritually, a person who has eternal life is not obsessed with the transient experience called “long life”.

Infact, like Christ’s parable of the talents taught, the more time we are given on Earth, the greater responsibility we have and the more accountable we are to God, as more returns or results (spiritually speaking) will be required of us, with respect to what we have done with the time we have been given.

Time is a valuable, non-renewable resource but exponentially powerful and productive resource.

We must understand that more will be required from those who had more days to live on Earth to accomplish God’s program for their lives.

A person who lived for one day can’t be expected to do or attain what a person who lived for several days and decades on Earth did or attained.

Finally, our lifetime will be judged and our results rewarded by God not based on the measure of our material acquisitions and earthly achievements but based on the measure in which we knew, grew in and served God’s Purpose for our lives, within the context of His Grand Plan of Salvation for Mankind and His Love for Humanity.

Without eternal life, long life would at the end of it all have been a fleeting and vain experience—no matter how fabulous it was and no matter how ‘long’ it seemed in our estimation—like an illusion.

Without spiritual life, life is indeed meaningless.

Teach us Lord to number our days, so we will apply our hearts and minds to spiritual wisdom/truth, which is the knowledge and fear of the Living God.

Without eternal life, long life is meaningless.

Grace to you!

_________

Dozie Osonkie

TRUTH Advocacy!

Thought Leadership