Does lifespan matter at all?

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I can understand that living to 60, 70 or 90 involve numerical differences, but these are full lives. One question I’m struggling with is, does TIME of a lifespan mean anything? What about a child who dies at 5 years-old? 1-year-old? Or a baby at birth? Or a week formed in the womb? Is there any difference between the soul here of these human beings?

Surely since God put human beings on earth he wants us here. He wants us to live. Make connections, do good, love, etc. But why would He form a human being and not allow him/her to live long enough to be born, or die shortly after? How is this fair? Say I get 90+ years of a full life, and another person gets a week and then dies as a baby. How is this fair to that baby? If I say, well, maybe this life is so temporary it really doesn’t matter, then I go in circles and tell myself, but surely it matters since God put us here, on this planet to love and live. And living a week isn’t the norm. Yet, for some, that is all they get of life on earth.

In a nutshell, I am struggling with the idea of time (in a lifespan) and how drastic disparities might or might not matter, and how fair it is. Why should I get so lucky to live a full life (since even if I died today I have lived a great life, with kids, etc.) whereas others have no chance to even grow up or even sometimes make it out of the womb? I treasure the people I’ve met in life and it’s hard to imagine dying before I had a chance to make ANY connections, such as if I’d died at birth.
 
Our lives here on earth are but the blink of an eye in terms of eternity.
 
Blessings on Earth are used as a foretaste of the Beatific VIsion, but any privileges enjoyed on Earth are like a drop of water in an ocean.

Life is drastically unfair. Some people die young and other live long and healthy. Some people have no hands, are paralyzed from the waist down, and sleep in a single bed with two other children in an orphanage in Haiti and are ecstatic for a week when a Dominican priest gives them a balloon to play with. Other people go home to a queen sized bed, a refrigerator full of food, and a thousand other comforts. Some people own private jets with living quarters fit for a king. Some people are brilliant. Some people are stupid. Some people are beautiful. Some people are ugly. Some people are charismatic. Some people have panic attacks if they’re in a room with more than 30 people.

"There is always something to envy. A smile. A friendship. Something you have and want to appropriate. There is no new man. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be the rich and the poor. Rich in gifts. Poor in gifts. Rich in love. Poor in love.’

The world is uneven because this forces man to act for the glory of God, either towards their salvation or their damnation.
 
It’s not the years…it’s the mileage! Live well and prosper!
 
Death was never God’s idea. We die, at whatever age, because sin is in the world wreaking havoc with the mechanisms that God put in place to make the world as He designed it to be.

Most of the time our deaths are the result of indirect rather than direct consequences of sin, but even so, death at any age isn’t caused by God. He takes us when we die, but our dying isn’t His idea. He doesn’t choose to take a child of one week old - rather, the effects of sin are such that a child dies at that particular moment, and because that happened, God then takes the child.

I hope that makes sense.
 
Sin actually does not make much sense to me, in some aspects related to the initial post. A baby dies in the womb because a cord gets wrapped around his neck…how does even indirect sin factor in? Or an earthquake kills kids. Surely God could prevent either tragedy. So, still pondering. ☺️ I understand war and humans doing sinful things…deaths and suffering happen. But natural disasters or random fetal death? And I guess I still wonder is there a difference between a life that is dead before birth or a life 100 years old.
 
The young child who dies, although didn’t enjoy the joys of a full life…also didn’t get a chance to sin or reject God. Therefore, will be with God in Heaven.
 
Crusaderbear said:
It’s not the years…it’s the mileage! Live well and prosper!
Click to expand...
Actually not.

Our human bodies are not so much like a car with an odometer, but rather like an airplane with a clock counting the hours flown, or the hours the engines have been running. It’s the time spent, not the distance travelled, that wears us down.

So keep moving – it generally Can’t hurt, and the life you live will be more fun! 🙂

ICXC NIKA
 
As to the OP question.

Between our LORD, who was killed barely out of His youth; and Methuselah, who was 969 when he presumably drowned in the Flood, who would you say had the more admirable life?

ICXC NIKA.
 
As many of the posts suggest, there are several reasons why bad things happen to good people including a short lifespan. The only thing I would add to the many good answers posted is free will.

Free will means that innocent people can be hurt by others, but the innocent are rewarded and blessed for eternity, far more important than what happens in this blink of an eye called life.

The ramifications of free will are far reaching, much more so than we might imagine. A child can die early due to a decision made 50 years earlier by an executive, to dump toxic chemicals illegally on his companies grounds. Greed kills, and so it goes with free will.

I hope all these posts helps with your question.
 
Who said LIFE or for that matter GOD was FAIR? When a very young person dies, I chalk it up to that they must have been such a good soul that they had nothing left to accomplish and therefore was ready for heaven. I think, too, sometimes that those who live long lives is because they still have some work to do for God.
 
Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life…and have it to the full.”

Where is the fullness of life in an old woman, hooked to a life support machine, robbed of the life savings she intended to leave to her heirs by a predatory medical care system?

Where is the fullness of life for people who risk everything on experimental surgeries to extend their life spans by, oh, say another six months?

Where is the fullness of life of an unborn child, sacrificed as a martyr to the sin of abortion?

All three souls will live for eternity. As a previous poster said, our life here is a drop in the bucket. But it is also a testing ground. To know, love, and serve God, and to be eternally happy with Him in the next life. It’s about quality, and choices, and free will. A life of prayer (no matter what the calling, be it to the religious life or the world/family/marriage), a life of service to God and other humans, can be a full life in a matter of weeks or months.
 
Thank you. Looking into the stars it us easy to wonder, in the course of billions of years, if my 100 or so ( should I be so lucky) matter. Yet, small moments make up the mystery of millennia. The drops in the ocean, together, comprise the powerful ocean. So, I think our moments and lives, however brief, matter a lot. I just always have a hard time understanding why a baby might die, his moments cut so short. In my mind it cheapens the significance of time and lifespan, making me think maybe our lifespan or what we accomplish on Earth does not matter so much…and then I go in circles again and think, but is not the fact I am alive (able to alleviate some suffering in a kid charity I help with) of some significance? To say even if my life was one week would be fine, well, yes, but then I would never have had the chance to help the individuals I am in touch with. ? Lots to think about I guess.
 
I don’t think God plans the length of our lives…He puts a soul into our body & lets our lives develop.
God didn’t plan for Cain to kill Able which ended his life.
Jesus only intervened a few times in changing the length of a life as in adding more time to Lazarus & other resurrections.

I believe God lets events affect our lives but may intervene in answer to prayer.
 
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