Life goes on. It’s a phrase that was used a lot in my youth. This evening I was dealing with the news that my sister Diana was dying and at the same time Trevor (the best boy in the world) was banging on the piano playing a song for his grandma. He was totally oblivious to the fact that I was fighting back tears and dealing with a deep sense of loss. Not five feet separated us but we were worlds apart.
James 4:13 - 17 says, “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
Living with things in proper perspective is tough. We get so caught up in the moment and place incredible weight on our perspective and opinions when in the cosmic scheme of things it’s literally nothing. We are on this planet for such a short time, with no guarantees of having another chance to make and impact on someone’s life for Jesus. We must live like there is no tomorrow because for some of us, there isn’t. I found out on March 28th (ten weeks ago tomorrow) that Diana probably had cancer. Tests the following week confirmed it. Now she will probably enter into eternity before the weekend is over. Just this week, in a town north of us, two girls, one 18 and the other 19, where sitting at a stoplight when a drunk driver plowed into their car and both girls were killed on impact. Life is just a mist. How different those families are today, yet, the weekend’s graduation celebrations will go one for the majority of the people who live in the same town and even on the same street.
The question that is disconcerting for me is, if our lives were to be snuffed out tonight, would it really matter? Not in the sense of being missed by loved ones and friends, I’m asking it in the sense of eternity, in the sense of why we are on the planet. I am sobered with the reality that life goes on as usual for far too many people, even though I’m in their lives, and it shouldn’t. We are on this planet to affect change; we are here to influence people for Jesus. Life shouldn’t go on as usual. Life should be changed for the good because we’re here as believers and it should result in a loss if we are gone. Would life go on as usual if you were gone?
That’s my reflection on today’s events. Just something to think about.
