Think of death often

I talked with one of my first cousins yesterday. I have literally not seen him in thirty or forty years. He owns a farm too and I asked him how he liked living on it. He said that he enjoyed it, but did not know how much longer he could continue to do it due to his age. Curious, I asked him how old he was now; I was guessing that he might be approaching 70. I could not believe it when he told me he was 76 years old. I told him I was 62 and he was likewise shocked. Where did the time go? All of a sudden we got old.

I have not been able to stop thinking about this phenomenon. Most of us see our parents and grandparents aging and it seems quite the natural thing, but when it happens to you and those you have known for a lifetime, it is quite the different thing. One day you just realize, “I’m old!”

Old folks all have one thing in common. We are all closer to seeing this life come to its conclusion than not. If we were to compare it to a baseball game, we might say that we are in the ninth inning, or maybe even on into extra innings. This stimulates reflection upon one’s life and we expend a little energy to look back upon our life and review how we lived it and we look ahead to what is going to occur after we die and we think about all of it long and hard.

As I reflect on my life I am amazed at what all God has allowed me to experience. I have had an interesting journey filled with intrigue and all of the elements of life including tragedy, violence, foreboding darkness, failure, loneliness, fear, and after the wonderful powerful filling of the Spirit of Jesus Christ happiness, success, joy, and peace. I have experienced complete loneliness as well as an abundance of family and friends; abject poverty and incredible wealth; devastating failure and incredible success. It has been quite the concoction of what life has to offer from evil to good.

I asked an atheist not long ago if he believed in evil and he seemed to be caught off guard by my question and befuddled by it. I could tell that he was wary of the question, because to admit that there is evil is dangerously close to admitting to some belief in powers not of this world. He stammered around and tried to give one of those pseudo intellectual answers but it just fell limp. I just grinned at his wriggling discomfort and sadly shook my head. His is an impossible task to explain away the existence of God or satan – good and evil.

Youngsters please be aware that time is ticking away for all of us and we just do not know how many more revolutions of the clock we have before we are faced with our demise. Some are blessed with a long life and some with a short life. We just do not know in advance when this journey will end and the next life will begin, so it is never too early to reflect upon your own life and more importantly where one will spend eternity.

The Bible tells us that we should think of death often. Most do not like the sound of that command. Why do you suppose that God tells us to do such a thing? I can say that as I get older I think about death often and it continues to impress upon me what is actually important in life and what is not and this helps me to focus on those things that are everlasting as opposed to those that will disappear like so much burned rubble. When we depart this life we take nothing with us but our spirit and our good works done for God’s kingdom. Everything else will be left behind.

Solomon the richest and wisest of all men concluded as follows:

Ecclesiastes 12:13
Let us hear the conclusion of the
Whole matter:
Fear God and keep His
commandments.
For this is man’s all.
For God will bring every work
into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil.