Ten out of ten people die.
It’s not necessarily a frightening statistic; just a fact of life... literally. I think that we often live as if we have all the time in the world. Now, I don’t think it is a conscious notion that we pursue. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “I can do anything because I am invincible.” It would be nice to think that we can take on anything and everything, but we, as humans, are frail.
As young people, I think we live as if we are unbreakable because we hold to the idea that we have 60 or 70 more years ahead of us. Is it a silly perception to have? Of course not. From personal experience, we see that most people will to be 70 or 80 years old. Not only that, but we do not live in a spirit of fear that we may not take our next breath. Even so, we do not always have the awareness that we cannot control our next breath nor keep our hearts beating.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “No kidding,” right? I teach this concept, yet I never fully grasped its full reality until recently. April 17, 2009 is a day I will not soon forget. A friend of mine was killed in a tragic accident in Colorado Springs. I have had friends die before, so why had this one hit me so hard? I think it was because she was only 18. She had just started college last semester. She was younger than me.
James said “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.’ Why, 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. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.’” James 4:13-15
Our lives are just a vapor and we are never guaranteed tomorrow. Knowing this, how will we choose to live today?
