DEATH. Day 9 of Lent. Death runs in the family.
“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart.” Eccl 7:2
Death runs in the family.
It’s a fact of life. Man is like grass, a vapor. Our Days Determined. Every one of them numbered before we were born. Our life has a limited number of days we cannot “go one day beyond” them. God orchestrates life. He is sovereign over His creation. God’s “eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16).
Our length of time is established by God and that gives us the assurance to trust Him as we journey through our days. When the religious leaders tried to take Jesus by force to have Him arrested He said “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here” (John 7:6) so God knows what we will face. All the evil of this world and the affairs and schemes of men cannot change what God has sovereignly ordained ahead of time for your life. God is for us. Nothing can take us from His hand. He is with us, we should never fear.
Yes, Death runs in the family but our length of time is established by God and that gives us the assurance to trust Him as we journey through our days. Today. We should ‘seize the day’- Carpi diem! We should pray “teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). And “show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is” (Psalm 39:4) so that we can live abundantly and intentionally on purpose.
Life is so short, “your time is here”, now.
Live today. Don’t wait until tomorrow.
“See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deut 30:15-19).
Choose life. Repent-think differently-return to the Lord. And Live out your purpose.
If we are blind to ourselves or deny the reality of a coming death, it is possible to live under a delusion. We think we are in control of our life, we are not. We even think we are good people, doing good things, living well, for a purpose, but maybe not.
Meditating on this word, Death, gives us a needed reality check just like a funeral makes us pause and reconsider our own life.
What if you could read your obituary? See how your life finished up. How you were measured. Here is the story of a man who did just that~
One morning in 1888 Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, awoke to read his own obituary. The obituary was printed as a result of a simple journalistic error. It was Alfred’s brother that had died and the reporter carelessly stated the death of the wrong brother. We would all be disturbed under the circumstances, but to Alfred the shock was overwhelming because he saw himself as the world saw him.
The “Dynamite King,” the great industrialist who had made an immense fortune from explosives. This, as far as the general public was concerned, was the entire purpose of Alfred’s life. None of his true intentions to break down the barriers that separated men and ideas for peace were recognized or given serious consideration. He was simply a merchant of death. And for that alone he would be remembered.
As he read the obituary with horror, he resolved to make clear to the world the true meaning and purpose of his life. This could be done through the final disposition of his fortune. His last will and testament–an endowment of five annual prizes for outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace (the sixth category of economics was added later)–would be the expression of his life’s ideals and ultimately would be why we would remember him. The result was the most valuable of prizes given to those who had done the most for the cause of world peace.
It is called today, the “Nobel Peace Prize.”
Death runs in the family but our length of time is established by God and that gives us the assurance to trust Him as we journey through our days and fulfill our purpose.
It only takes 40 days to create a life of purpose.
Read Rick Warren’s book-
The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? ( Expanded Edition)
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