Pourquoi Ma Vie!

My lovely friends, Jenn and Cassie  are basically half French. I've always wanted to learn French in France, so it makes me happy to be able to be around people who love French, too. I also went with Cassie on a trip to visit her Quebecoise friends in Montreal/Jolliet this summer; to sum it up, I spent five days listening to everyone talk in French and becoming ecstatic when I understood a word or short phrase. It was pretty humbling. 

Anyway, Jenn and Cassie got saying this crazy little phrase: "Pourquoi ma vie?!" Literally, it translates as "why my life?" I say it when I am feeling unjustly treated by life. Haha.

This morning I opened up Jesus Calling and read these words: Grow strong in your weakness. Not exactly self-explanatory, but it was no more paradoxical than things about conquering your fear and that being a servant makes you great, and other things like that. So I tried to let the concept wash over me. Tried not to figure it out too much.

The rest of the devotional explained that God wants to foster trust in us by using our weaknesses to show His own strength...and by letting us wander in the dark so that we physically cannot figure things out. He shows us that knowledge comes from Him, and Him alone.

It was a bunch of stuff I'd heard before. But still. I hadn't really understood it before. Which just reinforces the whole point of God being the one who reveals stuff to me - in His own timing.

So what does "pourquoi ma vie" have to do with all of this? Well, one of the verse references for this devotional was James 4. And verse four seriously jumped out at me. And made me chuckle and say, "Pourquoi ma vie!"

"For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."

[James 4:4]

Whoa, James. Why don't you ask me a harder question? James is pretty straight-forward. I admire that a lot. Honesty is usually not easy, especially if, like me, you have a tendency to want to please people more than anything else...yeah, it gets me into lots of half-truths and trouble. 

Wanna hear the French translation of all this? 

"Pour ce qui est votre vie? il ya même une vapeur qui paraît pour un peu de temps et qui ensuite disparaît."

Let's just say that I'm going to be asking myself this question a lot today. Isn't it weird to think how small and short our lives are? How quick they are ended? 

Vapor, fog, smoke...things you can see, smell, feel. But things you cannot grasp and cannot keep. Transparent things that you see other things through - or that clouds your perception of other things. 

So as you're sipping your morning, afternoon, or sixth cup of the day coffee, look at the little vapors coming off the hot surface and realize that you are one of them. Your life is short. What do you want your life to be about? What do you want this little drifting vapor to say to the world?