Here’s a little quote from Seneca’s writing On the Shortness of Life. It’s a wonderful quote that comes from someone without the knowledge of Christ. At the same time it is wonderful – because we see how common grace gives knowledge to all men – and it is terrible because we know how good knowledge can be corrupted by those who misapply, particularly without Christ as Lord:
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.
