Wasting Away

I grew up watching Disney movies. One of my favorites was "The Little Mermaid". Even the when I first watched it in the theater, I laughed when we met Ursula. If you haven't seen it, she is the antagonist, a very full-figured half-octopus. And she makes this statement, "And now, look at me - wasted away to practically nothing - banished, and exiled, and practically starving..." She looks anything but starving. This is one of the first things I think of when I hear "wasting away". The other is pictures I've seen from concentration camps in the Holocaust. Black and white photos where the subjects look like skeletons with sparse, wiry hair.

waste: verb 1. to consume, spend, or employ uselessly or without adequate return; use to no avail or profit; squander
2. to fail or neglect to use 
3. to destroy or consume gradually; wear away
4. to wear down or reduce in bodily substance, health, or strength; emaciate; enfeeble
5. to destroy, devastate, or ruin
~ Dictionary.com

I have seen a person's legs wither away because they cannot carry their owner. I have seen a woman's mind deteriorate to the point that she no longer recognizes the children she raised. I have seen cancer eat a vibrant man to a shadow of his former strength. I have seen people who, because of the sorrows of living, have lost themselves to one substance or another. And it makes me angry. And it makes me sad. It hurts that people I care for are, in one way or another, wasting away. We were created to live. We were created to fellowship with our Creator. We were created for joy! And yet here we are. Wasting away.

But God...

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7
 
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Dear Friend, God the Son, Jesus Christ left heaven to suffer on earth. He lived perfectly in our place, and then died to bear God's wrath against our sins. He died to save us from the penalty and the effects of sin. Because one day those who have believed in Him for salvation will be raised to live forever in bodies that will no longer be subject to the waste of sin! In Him is life! In His presence is fullness of joy! This is hope.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
1 Corinthians 15:1-5