Continuing with the awkward wrinkles between English and Chinese, let’s talk about “life”.
In Chinese, we have the word “生命” for “life”, which describes the essence or state of being alive. We also have the word “生活“, which describes the act of living, the days that we live, or sometimes the lifestyles we adopt.
Regrettably, we don’t have separate words in English to adequately nuance the two meanings. It’s not particularly a problem until someone says something like, “求主幫助我們的生命和生活”. That sentence makes perfect sense in Chinese. But saying “Lord, help us with our lives and lives” is far from ideal.
Solution? Just say “life” once, which captures both meanings already. Or, you can also say “life and days” to match the linguistic structure.