If Today Was Your Last

February 9, 2009

I spend the better part of this afternoon in the ER with my grandpa. And in the course of blood test, doctors coming in and out, nurses doing what they do I had an abundance of time to ponder the thought of the fragility of life. There is nothing like staring death in the face to have the reality of life come to the surface. There was a magazine sitting on the counter of the ER room that highlighted some of the Hollywood stars and what their 2008 year was like. After an hour or two I picked it up and flipped through it and was shocked at what was “important” in the eyes of the world. I continued to look from the magazine to the tired pain filled face of my grandpa and was so disgusted with what culture was trying to pass off as the “important things in life”.

Growing up we didn’t have cable TV in our house and movies were the rare occasion when I was a young child. Mom and dad would be out for the evening and inevitably my sister, brother and I would talk the babysitter into letting us waist the evening and watch a movie or two. In the moment it would be great fun, but about the time mom and dad were supposed to be home it was the mad dash to finish the chores, clean the kitchen, read our proverbs and be in bed on time like we needed to. I remember the feeling of having done what I wanted to do and not what I needed to and when time ran out … time just ran out. Mom and Dad were home and we had to give account for our time and what we did…or what we didn’t do.

When you are looking at the end of your life and all you have to look at is what is behind you and the days you have already lived things like fashion, the perfect body, popularity, positions, vacations, cars, houses…everything that most of us spend our life trying to obtain are worthless, empty and at best a vanishing vapor.

James 4:14 “Whereas you don’t not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

Before we left for the hospital grandma made the statement that God knows the day that is our last…on the tail of that she said “I wonder if we would live different if we knew the exact time and day that we would die?” That thought has been the fuel for the majority of my pondering today. If I knew that in exactly two years three days and ten hours I would be dead…how would I live? What would I do with that time? Who would I talk to? How would I treat people? What would I do with my money? What would be the legacy I would leave behind? Would eternity be marked in anyway by my life?

In Rick Zachary’s book The Master Of Relationships he makes a profound statement on what really matter in life - “There is only one thing I can give that will increase the kingdom, and that is the soul of another human being.”

The truth is I don’t know when my last day is…but I do know that it is a day that will come sooner or latter. What will I spend my life on? I am the one who will stand accountable for the days of my life and what I did with them. How about you? If today was your last would you be satisfied with the work of your hands and what your life represented?