the complete life

Scaffoldings are for buildings, and the moments and days and years of our earthly lives are scaffolding. What are you building inside the scaffolding, friend?

What kind of structure will be disclosed when the scaffolding is knocked away? What is the end for which days and years are given? That they may give us what eternity cannot take away—a character built upon the love of God in Christ, and molded into His likeness.

“Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

Has your life helped you do that? If it has, though you be but a child, you are full of years; if it has not, though your hair be whitened with the snows of the nineties, you are yet incomplete and immature. The great end of life is to make us like Christ, and pleasing to Christ. If life has done that for us we have got the best out of it, and our life is completed, whatever may be the number of the days.

Quality, not quantity, is the thing that determines the perfectness of a life.

(from The Best of Alexander Maclaren, p. 2; spacing and emphasis mine)