It’s helped me to remember the anonymous quote that says, “treat everyone as if they were going to be dead by midnight for you never know when their hour will come”. They need your encouragement, your smile, your laughter, your tears, your presence, your prayers, and many other things. There is a whole earth filled with people who need you. Richard Bach said, “Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.” We have work to do, my friends. This, along with ultimately bringing Glory to God, is what we were created to do. We will invest in eternity by investing in each other, since we’re all eternal beings. When we acknowledge the fact that everyone will eventually die, we can focus on what really matters and truly live life as God intended. As usual, the secret is found in balance.
I don’t have to fear the end, but I shouldn’t ignore it either. Lastly, the only sane option is to accept the fact that my life on earth is finite, and so are the lives of those around me. And when we try to live life against God’s commands, it’s a pretty miserable existence, not to mention the fact that I would probably die early just from the toll that sheer worry and fear would take on my body. Of course, this would be in defiance of God’s command to “fear not”. Second, I could exist in complete fear that my next breath will be my last I could cling to those I love in frightened defiance to God’s plan for them and I could sit in bed every night and tremble at the thought of the death angel visiting and stealing away one of my loved ones. I can’t think of a worse way to leave the earth than to be guilty of a life left un-lived. I can keep filling my time with “fluff”, only to realize when the end finally comes (as it inevitably will), that I accomplished nothing with the time God gave me I didn’t make a single difference in the world. So I have a few choices about how I view this thing called death:įirst, I could shove it into the back of my mind and pretend that it doesn’t exist pretend that tomorrow is promised and a thousand tomorrows after that are promised, too pretend I’ll never have to say good-bye to anyone and life will continue in a happy state forever. My great-great grandpa lived to be 102 years old, yet my great-aunt died at 14 years of age. But the thing is, we really don’t know when we’re going to draw our last breath. Hopefully, we all will have more than one more month to live on this earth. The to-do list has taken a back seat to the to-live moments that randomly pop up, and little things have made me smile much more often. Social media has become less important, and those who are sitting right beside me have become much more important. Despite sounding cliche, I have to admit, facing the reality of death has changed the way I live my life. It nagged at me until I bought a copy of my own. I hate good-byes, I hate endings, and I’d really just rather the rapture come so that I don’t have to say good-bye to anyone else and we can all go up to Heaven together. When my sister picked up the book “One Month to Live” by Kerry and Chris Shook, I pretty much made up my mind that I didn’t want to read it. But sometimes I think we keep ourselves busy with insignificant things in life so that we don’t have to face our own mortality. Not that looking at cute stuff on Pinterest or keeping up with your favorite sports team is wrong I’m as big of a Pinterest fan as the next gal. But since we don’t like to think about that sort of thing, let’s concentrate on something else instead….like that cute panda bear on Pinterest or maybe the stats for the most recent ball game.
There’s a 100% chance you’re not going to make it out of this life alive.