Billy Graham remarked once that the thing that amazed him most about life was its brevity.
As I look at actuarial data and see the average life span is close to 80 now I couldn’t agree more. Yesterday someone called and asked if I knew what day it was. I replied that it was Wednesday. She went on to tell me that the date happened to be her 29th anniversary of coming to work for me.
Yikes!
Twenty-nine years? Has it been that long? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
We had a good time reminiscing and talking about the good old days when I was building my first companies. She worked for me as a key employee for several years and then eventually bought two of my companies and I moved on towards greener pastures. We have remained good friends ever since, but only talk to each other on rare occasion nowadays.
She remarked that she had moved to a remote area of Georgia to a very rural area where she lives alone on a 648 acre farm which she maintains solo. I asked if that was a lonely existence and she told me, no she wasn’t lonely at all and then added that in fact she’d never been happier. She raises whitetail deer and keeps up her farm which is beyond a full-time job, but then she told me something that made my old heart soar. She told me about her tremendous love for Jesus Christ. She said that it would be impossible to be lonely because everywhere she looks she sees His beautiful work such as gorgeous sunrises, sunsets, wildlife, and so on.
She remarked that she still had the Bible that I’d given her so many years ago when she came to work for me and she faithfully participates in a televised daily Bible study and has been doing so for many years. She told me that Bible was marked up through and through. We talked about the Bible extensively and to my delight her knowledge of Scripture was quite extraordinary.
She told me she was at complete peace and did not worry about anything. She has entrusted her life completely to the Lord and knows with all of her heart that He will care for her. This was astonishing in itself because I remember when she was neurotic and worried about everything. I used to lecture her about the evil of worry and how it accomplished nothing but health problems and that she needed to trust the Lord and things would end up fine.
She told me she finally understood and was one example of someone whose life had been completely changed by Jesus Christ and she wouldn’t take anything for it.
Wow! Wow! Wow!
Praise God for finding favor in my friend who like so many of us struggled and stumbled through part of life as she looked for peace and comfort in her career, money, and accolades for big achievements in her business life, only to find all of those things to be hollow like her heart which had a hole in it. But eventually she filled that hole in her heart with the love of Christ and now she knows that she knows that the only really important thing in this short life is her relationship with Jesus.
Oh that everyone could know the glorious feeling of knowing God and being close to Him. One of the verses she quoted to me from memory is below. I say bravo. I’m really happy she called out of the blue. I hope you enjoyed it as well…
Phil. 4:7
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.