Last evening I sat at my kitchen table and celebrated my upcoming birthday. This morning I woke to an email that a co-worker had passed away. As I sat around a table full of laughter, she sat in a hospital room taking her last breath. At work her projects will go on, at home dinners will be eaten, her family will struggle, but will find a new normal, and friends and co-workers will feel a void. While life will move forward, she will be gone from us, taken unexpectedly and quickly. It is so easy to sit and ask why. I know I’ve done it more times than I care of count. I don’t know when I’ll be taken from this world. Neither did she. I’m sure when she woke up last Sunday she didn’t think this is my last week alive.
And as it is appointed unto men once to die Hebrews 9:27a
What if we lived like it was our last week? What if we did as Jesus said and loved the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind? What if we put aside our differences and loved our neighbor as ourselves as the Bible instructs us to do? Such simple instructions – love God and love others and yet it seems that it is so hard for us to do most days. I wish I could tell you that I know exactly where my co-worker is spending eternity, but I can’t. I didn’t know her heart, only God does, just as He is the only one that truly knows mine. I can play a good game and fool a few people, but God will always know my heart. My hope is when He looks He is pleased.
Jeremiah 17:10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.