2 Timothy 4:6 “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure.”

Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy has been described as his last will and testament. In a story we know from the end of the book of Acts, Paul had spent two earlier years in prison waiting for a hearing before Nero, the emperor. Paul was released after that stint in prison. Now, five or six years later, Paul was in prison again. After a full and complete life’s journey, this was his last stop.

These words describe his quickly passing final days. Do you understand the picture he paints? When we think about sacrifices and offerings in Bible times, we tend to think about animal sacrifices. You bring a sheep or a calf to the temple. The priests kill it, dress it, and heave it up on an altar with a real fire to cook it.

But not every sacrifice was a blood sacrifice. The Lord also commanded offerings of grain and bread, and oil and wine. The so-called “drink offerings” of wine were poured out in the temple. The whole thing, from a quart to a half gallon, was poured out on the ground. You can picture it, can’t you, the blood red liquid sluicing out of a jar or pitcher, the wide stream narrowing at the end until the last of it leaves the container and falls to the ground? It takes just a few moments and it’s done. And once poured to the ground it is gone and can’t be reclaimed. Any puddle quickly soaks in and disappears.

So Paul pictures his life: going, going, gone. It all passes rather quickly, you can’t stop it, and you can’t get it back. It’s not necessarily a pessimistic picture, but it is a realistic one. It’s a truth with which we all have to come to terms. Our life in this world is pouring out on the ground, it won’t last forever (not this one; not here), and we can’t get it back. What will we do with it in the brief span before its gone?

Too many people treat their time like it is an inexhaustible resource. There will always be tomorrow. It matters little how they fill their time today. We waste our time on mindless distractions, scrolling to the next Facebook post on our phones or clicking on the next YouTube video.

We think we are using it more seriously, that we are adding more value to our lives, when we invest our time to better the quality and comfort of our existence here. We work hard so that we can upgrade our homes, or our cars. We travel to places our parents or grandparents never did. We have things past generations could never even have imagined.

But when the last of our lives comes spilling out of the jar and soaks into the ground, what is the use of all this? Can we trade our possessions or experiences for a place in the life to come? Do they help anyone else get there? Do they make any difference at all in the long view of eternity? “Do not love the world, neither the things that are of the world,” the Apostle John once wrote. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does–comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away…”

You and I have not come to the end yet today. The jar is tipped, the juice is flowing, and the end will come soon enough, maybe sooner than we think. But today we live. Today we can repent of the useless ways we have filled our time and the useless stuff that has filled our lives. Today we can put our faith in God’s grace and receive his pardon. Today, the present, we can concern ourselves with what happens when the last drops of this life disappear, like Paul, so that we can be confident that our departure leads somewhere better—not an empty end, but a new life full of promise.